


this is how it didn't happen.

by vanillacaramel



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Canon Compliant, Crushes, El Clásico, FIFA, FIFA Ballon d'Or, First Kiss, First Time, First Time Blow Jobs, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Phone Sex, Pining, Secret Relationship, Stuttering, Teasing, Unrequited Love, angst angst angst, dad! cristiano, fluff fluff fluff, ras tas tas, super canon compliant
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2018-03-16
Packaged: 2018-05-05 20:12:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 60,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5388755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vanillacaramel/pseuds/vanillacaramel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>//chapter 36 updated //</p><p>because it's not even about james, it's everyone. his whole life destined to end this way. someone moving on, wanting that mystical real life, that normality. cristiano having to forever keep this a secret, buried, his life a lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

 

 

>   **“He’s a good person. I’m a fan of his. He makes me feel like we’ve known each other forever. He’s a great human being.”- James about Cristiano, September 2014**

 

After the back to back defeats against Atletico and Real Sociedad, James had been gutted, winded, and he'd made it all his fault. This wasn't how he'd hoped his new career at Real Madrid would go. He knew he would bear the brunt of the criticism, and he'd deserved it. He felt like apologizing to all his new team mates after each game. To the fans, to his country.

He silently got dressed as the others engaged in joking around or talking about friends and family, anything but the game, none of them looking his way. Too embarrassed to make eye contact with them, not wanting to feel the weight of the accusations in their eyes. Focusing on showering and changing and just getting out of there, hoping to leave the stench of failure behind.

He's picking up his bag to leave when he feels a touch to his shoulder. Cristiano. He's never quite sure what he's meant to say to him, not knowing exactly how Cristiano perceived him, as an over eager little fanboy, or as a team mate, an equal. Not yet. He immediately shrugs back as though he could be in his way. "Sorry," he says, stepping aside.

Cristiano's hand pulls him back. "Hey," he says softly, and when James stills but doesn't respond he adds, "Don't take it too personally, okay?"

Not wanting to talk about it, let alone with him, James keeps his eyes down, nodding.

After a pause Cristiano's hand stays on him, prompting him to finally look up. Cristiano's looking at him gently, almost concerned for him, reading him better than he'd hoped, and he's smiling, his hand moving to his cheek, "Chin up, kid, okay?"

James returns the smile weakly, looking back down again, embarrassed at being caught like this. Thinking about all the mistakes he'd made in the game all over again, every bad pass adding up. Having anyone talk to him and be kind to him pulls at his urge to cry, to just fall into pieces about what a mess this Real thing had become, until they lied and told him it was all going to be okay even when he didn't believe it would be. But he's definitely not doing that with Cristiano, so he keeps his eyes down, just nods and thanks him and leaves.

At home that night on the phone to his family, he does cry. And they tell him it's all going to be okay. And he doesn't believe them.

 

***

 

For the first few weeks, James had been in a type of awe really around Cristiano really, but he couldn't help himself. Getting to see someone he'd idolized in posters on his teenage wall become a real person to him was never something he'd have imagined was possible. His hero becoming someone who ate breakfast with him, told him bad jokes, got upset when he played a bad game, needed reassuring from his team mates. But it was like befriending a movie character, or a super hero, someone who never quite seemed real no matter how close up he was to him. Something about him still too larger than life, Hollywood glossy.

Things at work become more relaxed, comfortable. He becomes friendly with most of the team, getting invited to dinners and barbecues, learning secret handshakes and inside jokes with Marcelo, and Cristiano had even given him the number of his hair stylist, which he figured must mean something. That, and the way he starts to tease James during training and on the pitch, reminding him not to take it all too seriously, not to let it get to him too much.

Like this, they become something close to friends. Over lunch in the canteen in the day, they'd talk about family, friends, life back in Colombia, back in Portugal, and taking a sip of coffee one morning Cristiano had asked him about his girlfriend, if she was enjoying Spain too.

"Oh, I'm not seeing anyone," James had responded quickly.

Cristiano's eyebrows had quirked up, "No?"

James was embarrassed, as though being single was a revelation about how undateable he was, the deep personal flaws that kept girls away. "It's hard dating when you're not in one place long enough with all the traveling we do, you know?"

Cristiano had smiled, "Maybe you'll stay here long enough then, huh."

He'd kept his eyes level with his until James wasn't sure what he was meant to say **.** He'd blinked back down at his coffee, shrugging, "Hopefully, huh."

Marcelo was making a joke about their strict dietary prison food and they were sucked back into the banter, everything normal and fine and not awkward. James realizing that it's just him who's been feeling like that, that nothing he says around Cristiano probably registers much.

Like this the team starts playing better, starts feeling like a real team. They're winning games now, one after the other after the other, and the locker room is different, music blasting, the guys dancing, singing, laughing.

There's samba playing and Marcelo teases him, "Do we get discount dance classes for hiring you?"

James is embarrassed at first, but Marcelo pulls him in, dancing with him, like this is a dancefloor back in Medellin, like he's just scored a goal in the world cup. Marcelo starts clapping for him and everyone else is dancing and having fun and he looks across the room and sees Cristiano there watching, fresh from a shower, hair wet, a towel around his neck. He's smiling at him and when they make eye contact, he holds it for a second.

Even though he's seen Cristiano half naked enough times in his life, both in print and up close in person in the locker room, he finds himself suddenly distracted by having his attention on him in this way, his cheeks burning. He goes to take a drink of water, finish getting dressed, leave the others to it.

When he turns around Cristiano's standing there, attempting the Ras Tas Tas playfully in front of him, laughing, like it's his joke for him. That was something else James had learned, that Cristiano would make a fool out of himself sometimes, if only it made one other person laugh.

James finds himself correcting him without meaning to, "No you put -" and a sigh, reaching for Cristiano's hips and adjusting them for him, holding them and making them move in time with both him and the beat.

Cristiano's body following along stiffly, resisting for a second, before letting James's hands guide him.

James is grinning. The next song comes on, and now Cristiano playfully takes James' hand to spin him around once, making him laugh, and then he pulls James back to him, still swaying his hips, keeping up with the rhythm. Cristiano's hand stays on the small of his back, James's hands on Cristiano's hips. They're close, moving in sync, Cristiano following along to James's. Almost dancing hip to hip, and it's like they're partners in a dance, like a man and woman, like they're lovers. James is laughing at this idea, and looks up.

Cristiano isn't smiling. His mouth is parted, his expression serious, a flicker of something dark and real in his eyes --

The song turns to something else, something slower, something romantic.

James blinks away, dropping his hands to his sides, his face flushing hot. Laughing to disguise his awkwardness. "Yeah, like that," he says, keeps his eyes down, studies their feet.

He laughs at the others who are still dancing, still having fun, and turns away, goes back to finishing getting dressed on the other side of the room. As he leaves he tries not to take Cristiano too seriously when he puts a hand to his back and says, "You have to teach me for real sometime, hmm."

Finds himself flinching at the touch. His skin suddenly too hot, too cold.

It's days before he can let himself look Cristiano in the eyes again.

** 

After a game Ancelotti had spoken to the press about newcomers needing to be given time to adjust, bond with the team, and afterwards Cristiano approaches him, asks him if he has any plans.

"Plans for what?" James had said, wide eyed innocence. Plans for the next game, a zombie apocalypse, a new hairstyle?

Cristiano was smiling, "Plans for tonight." James was shaking his head and Cristiano continued, "Why don't you drop by my place for a beer and a game of FIFA? If you're free, that is."

Arriving there later that night, he'd felt a little ridiculous. He'd changed twice before leaving, settling on a buttoned up shirt and jeans. He couldn't tell if he should be dressing down or dressing up, as though Cristiano would care if he arrived in sneakers and sweats, as though Cristiano cared about what James looked like at all. All he knows is that he wants to impress him.

At his door, Cristiano greets him with a smile, wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing at training that morning, dark faded jeans and a sweatshirt, and James instantly feels self conscious, over dressed. 

He leads him up to his bedroom for the game, explaining that his son is already asleep and they have to be a little quiet. Perching at the end of his bed, Cristiano pops open a beer for him, an expensive kind with an exotic name that tastes rich and sweet, like it can get you drunk on one can. He tosses him a second controller and quits the game he was playing, starts another. James had thrashed half the team in FIFA already, was the reigning champion with his team back in Colombia, and though Cristiano scores the first goal, he's surprised to learn that Cristiano isn't the world's greatest FIFA player. James manages to score another 4 and win, before Cristiano demands an instant rematch, to which James also wins.

He's laughing, giddy, a little loose and heady from the beer, because this is his specialty, this is what he's really good at, winning FIFA games, and he's able to do it against his hero. Cristiano's pretending to be deeply offended, telling him he's not allowed to tell anybody that this happened, that this is their secret.

As the night draws on, Cristiano regales James with old stories about his team mates, about La Decima, how it feels to score a goal in the final of the UEFA championship. James beats Cristiano in four games and loses just the once, and though Cristiano's competitive to the core, he doesn't seem bothered. He makes jokes about how if he keeps this up he's going to have to give James his Ballon D'Ors later. James is warm and giggly from his wins and the third beer he's on, confident, cocky. He teases Cristiano back, flaunting his wins, celebrating with shameless little ras tas tas dances right in front of Cristiano, until he's laughing and yelling at James to get his Shakira wannabe ass away from the screen.

And there's a weird tight clench in James's stomach every time Cristiano laughs at his jokes, or looks at him in the dark of his room. But James is sure it's only him, because Cristiano never gets shy or short on words, never gets intimidated by anyone.

Their sixth game ends in a draw, and they're left to duke it out in a penalty shoot out. Cristiano takes his turn first and James starts to tease him, mock booing and nudging at his chest, blocking his vision with his hands, until Cristiano turns to grab an arm, holding him in place as he shoots and scores.

As James takes his turn, he keeps one arm out shielding himself, expecting Cristiano to retaliate.

He's surprised to feel nothing at first, just silence. 

He steadies his shot when he feels a hand over his jeans, his crotch. Squeezing hard. 

He jumps, the shot flying way above goal.

He turns to look at Cristiano for an explanation, laughing at his successful prank, but Cristiano's staring straight ahead, expression blank.

Cristiano takes his own penalty without looking away from the screen, James still staring at him. Though James doesn't say or do anything, Cristiano's shot is weak and gets saved by the goalkeeper.

He goes back to take his turn again, focusing on winning the game, but braces himself for Cristiano to try something else.

Instead there's silence.

Cristiano not having moved or looked back at him once since he'd done it. James takes his shot and scores, then turns to see what Cristiano's reaction will be to his win. Preparing to gloat, to ignore whatever this had been, pretend it had never happened.

But as he turns to look, he's thrown back and isn't sure what's happening until he feels the hard warmth of Cristiano's mouth on his.

He sucks in a breath, wanting to laugh, because this has to be a joke, this has to be part of a prank he's playing on him.

Opening his mouth, Cristiano's tongue slides against his and his mind empties.

And it's like - relief, in a way, the tension broken. 

The feeling off too much alcohol, inhibitions and thoughts blurring and crashing. Thoughts about how he's never kissed a guy before, never even thought about it, and now he's got Cristiano's tongue in his mouth - and it's like scoring a goal in the world cup. Like standing over a penalty shoot out, the potential for greatness or catastrophe curling into his ribs.

His mind blanking to what happens next. What if this is all some kind of sick game of Cristiano's. What if he responds and that's it, Cristiano has his joke, tells everyone at work tomorrow. What if none of this is real. What if everything about this is real. What if the universe is ending, and this is the sign, this is how it begins, with Cristiano's mouth on his.

And it's like - his entire life has been nothing but being wound up so tight, too tight, and this kiss is unraveling him at every seam.

His heart racing, mind blacking out and coming to over and over again inside the waves of the kiss, still not believing that it's Cristiano there, kissing him.

He tries to steady his breathing. To remember how to breathe, afraid to react. The thing is, the thing he knows is; he doesn't want to do anything that'll stop this. To make Cristiano think he's enjoying it or not, to disturb whatever this is in anyway.

He's memorizing it, wanting to keep it. If it's not real, if this is all it is, he knows he has to remember everything.

How Cristiano's mouth is insistent, the way everything about Cristiano always is, refusing to back down. The way he tastes, fresh and vibrant and real, like the way adrenaline tastes in his mouth after a big game. The way his tongue hits him all the way into his lungs, his guts, so that he's breathing nothing but Cristiano out. The way the heat of his tongue spreads through every part of his body; a light turning on, illuminating everything.

He lays there, letting Cristiano kiss him deeper and deeper, his tongue inside his mouth, inside his head, inside his dreams. It's serious, intimate, like knowing a secret of his. As though telling James every secret.

Mentally dropping crumbs, wanting to remember his way back if he has to, if this is all he ever gets. He needs to remember how real this was, how close to something he ever was.

When Cristiano pauses for a second to breathe, moving back a little, James licks his lips, body subconsciously missing the taste of him already, craving it. Cristiano presses back into it, meeting his tongue outside his mouth like that. Flicking his tongue against James's for a long slow minute that makes every part of his body shiver.

Without meaning to, he moans.

He feels betrayed by the sound, but Cristiano only presses back harder against him.

And James lets himself respond, lets his tongue play with Cristiano's, tries to keep in contact with his. Cristiano makes a sound too now, a low sigh of acknowledgement, breathing in before kissing him again. Letting James lead this time, letting his tongue slip inside his mouth. 

It isn't a joke, this is real, this is really happening. He's kissing and being kissed by Cristiano Ronaldo.

He's whimpering openly, helpless, his body on fire, needing more.

In response he feels Cristiano's hand slide down and everything in his mind blacks out as he cups his hand over his crotch for real this time and squeezes again. James can't help it, he inhales deeply, jerking back with a pant. He's hard, and Cristiano knows, knows he's turned on. But he doesn't stop or move away. If this is a game then he's gotten what he'd wanted, but he's not laughing. Instead Cristiano squeezes and rubs against him there again and again, flicking his tongue into his mouth as he does.

James can't help but jerk up a little everytime his hand rubs against him, squeezing and stroking him through the material. Cristiano lets him catch his breath by moving away, watching him for a moment, taking him in like this. The way his eyes are half open, unfocused, mouth bruised red, before kissing him again.

He's too weak to care, if this had been a joke, if this isn't real, he's hard and aching in his jeans, and he wants everything. Wants whatever's about to happen, to happen.

Cristiano's hand is unzipping his jeans, sliding in, reaching for him. James shuts his eyes, holds his breath, tries not to unravel completely as Cristiano pulls him out. His grip tight and slick as he begins pumping him. It's already too much, and James is shaking.

He opens his eyes to see Cristiano watching his hand working against him, before he looks back at him. His eyes dark, pupils blown, expression serious. This isn't a joke, this isn't a joke. 

He presses his forehead against James, lets him react against him, savouring it. He holds him there like that as he keeps up his movements, only stopping to kiss him. His tongue flicking in quickly, pulling back to let James breathe before kissing him over and over again. It's this, how intimate this is, how tender Cristiano is, that does it for him. He moans deeply, as he comes apart in Cristiano's hand. Everything black, white, full of stars.

Riding out the aftershocks, he can feel Cristiano's hand still jerking against him. Realizes that Cristiano's touching himself, is getting off on this. He pulls Cristiano in for a kiss again. Knowing that he's doing this to him, that he's capable of this, that as their mouths touch that Cristiano's touching himself, that he's turning him on, is like a burn in his chest, like feeling himself on fire. Cristiano pulls back for a second and James can feel the way his body tenses as he takes in a deep breath and grunts, feeling the hot liquid on his skin, before Cristiano rolls over on to his side, catches his breath.

They lay there for moments in silence, the cool air of the room on his skin sobering. That taste of him in his lungs evaporating. His body missing everything about him already. The bread crumb trail ending. Afraid to turn to him right away. How real it would make this, the edges of this moment sealing up around him. Whatever this is, he doesn't want it to end, to be the one to ruin it. 

It's Cristiano who gets up first, half naked, and beautiful, and James watches as he slips his softening cock back into his sweats casually, another hand running through his hair. He lets his eyes skim over Cristiano's body, the way he hadn't felt he could before. He relishes it, like it's a gift he's been given. Can't believe it at all, that Cristiano lets him have all this.

He's picking up a sweater, pulling it on, finding a towel and tossing it over to him. He glances at the watch on his wrist before looking back at him from across the room. Voice just as casual, "You want a lift back to your place?"

He feels something cold and wet sinking in to him. The edges sealing up, reality creeping in. It takes him a second before he says, "Yeah, yeah." He starts getting up, wiping himself down, feeling ridiculous now, exposed, entirely naked. Cristiano has his back to him, is pulling on his shoes, and James is awkwardly trying to zip up his jeans, adjust his clothing, run a hand through his hair. His heart still racing, a voice in his head on repeat. This was a mistake, this was a mistake.

When Cristiano is dressed he turns to look at James for a moment to check he's ready, before turning and heading out. James following behind in silence. His body full of ice, the feeling of dread, an instant hang over. This is the worst mistake of his life.

By the time James gets into Cristiano's car, it's on and running, the radio already playing, filling in the silences for them. James doesn't try to look at Cristiano, doesn't want to see the regret on his face, doesn't want to make this moment worst than it already is.

But Cristiano does that too, by speaking suddenly. He starts making small talk about the game tomorrow, his eyes on the empty streets ahead, as if James could even care about the game anymore. But he doesn't want this to be bad, he doesn't want to have ruined everything. So he agrees with what he says, throwing in yeah's, okay's, and good idea's. Every casual word out of Cristiano's mouth like a kind of insult, a way of slowly crushing him alive. He has to agree to it, act casual about it, act like none of this bothers him.

When Cristiano parks outside his building, James undoes his seatbelt and finally dares to look at him. He's surprised to see Cristiano is staring right back, acknowledging him full on for the first time since it had happened. "I'll see you tomorrow," he says. But his eyes say nothing.

James nods, agrees, because that's all he's capable of, lets himself out. The cool air of the night hitting him as a relief almost, a drowning man surfacing for the first time. The beauty and agony of breathing air untainted by water again, remembering you're alive, that you have to keep on living.

As he makes his way inside, he knows already that he won't sleep. Knows that Cristiano's scent on his clothes and skin will wind its way into him throughout the night. That the way he'd tasted, that electric feel of his mouth against his, will leave him feeling cold and empty by morning. He doesn't shower, doesn't brush his teeth. He lets himself feel it, lets the regret wind itself around him, craving it. 

If this is all he gets, he wants to feel it all. If this is going to hurt, he wants it all to hurt.


	2. Chapter 2

He'd dressed and undressed half a dozen times before leaving for training that morning. Sleepless, his head feeling like the worst kind of hang over. Thoughts muddied, thick, spinning.

Even after showering and caffeine and brushing his teeth, he couldn't shake it.

The way Cristiano's cologne had bled into all of his clothes. That static in his skin from his touch. The taste of him like a champagne hangover in his mouth. That feeling of having been violated, not by Cristiano, but by himself; the worst type of betrayal.

He'd brushed his teeth again, gargled his mouthwash extra long, didn't stop checking his hair in the mirror on the drive in.

Approaching the team on the field to practice, and it's the worst thing, that rush in his heart and in his throat when he sees him there. Taller than almost everyone else, louder. Sticking out bright as a neon sign. The way James can't see anyone else there but him.

It's the worst, how he's grinning already when Cristiano sees him, the way he can't help himself. A second's pause as their eyes meet. A second where Cristiano doesn't smile back, doesn't say anything, looks away. Eyes blank, no recognition. And everything is nausea. Everything is the worst. That terrible last shred of optimism, gone.

A sharp pain under his ribcage, the kind of chest pain that could last for minutes or hours and could be nothing at all or might mean he's slowly dying of something long undiagnosed, something eating him alive from the inside out.

Wonders again if it had all been a joke, a long extended prank, a slow way to torture a new team mate alive.

Ancelotti speaks to them all in a circle and James's head is thudding, his heart in a dive - how hot his mouth had been, the way his hands had possessed him, still posses him -- how much he wants Cristiano to just turn and look and smile at him now. Instead Cristiano whispers and laughs with Benzema and Bale -- and James unravels and unravels.

His lips are still sore. Cristiano's mouth had been bruising and rough, and he'd been rubbed raw under it. Everything too sensitive now, nerves exposed.

And Cristiano's cool, casual, funny, and James can't stop staring. Everything about him always too much. Teasing the others. Ignoring him. His eyes skimming over and through him as they jog about.

He tries to avoid Cristiano's gaze, afraid of it, like every part of him will be exposed under it, a camera film being held up to light. Afraid of what he won't see in Cristiano's eyes.

Because Cristiano had figured him out.

He finds himself clinging to Marcelo's side through most of the morning. Afraid that without him, he'll be left to drown in the ocean of his thoughts. This weird withdrawal he was going through. This weird loneliness. Because he knows he can't ever breathe a word about this to another living being. This would be something that would only exist between the two of them. And because it made him a stranger to himself. Betrayed by how much he'd wanted it, wants it. The way it feels as though he'd woken up to discover a tattoo on his back he'd never seen before. A side of himself he didn't know existed, a side Cristiano had been able to see first.

He'd figured him out.

Finds himself infinitely jealous of everyone Cristiano talks to, touches, pathetically preoccupied by all of it. Not even with the idea that Cristiano may like them a lot more than he seems to like him, but because he craved that normality. Cristiano casually putting an arm around them, teasing them, talking to them about their girlfriends or wives or kids. Wishes he could have that more than anything, more than whatever this dark twisted thing between them had become.

And the worst is, when Cristiano does look at him. When he assists him in a goal in training and he gets that rush in his chest the way he always does when he assists, and especially when it's for him, Cristiano smiles at him, full on, for the first time that day, and it stuns him stupid for a second, like he's staring directly into the sun. Everything suddenly bright and alive and beautiful. Then he pats him on the back and says thank you, casually, in the way James had wanted, and it's like maybe everything's fine. Better than fine. He can finally just forget about the whole thing. That he's totally over it, they can go back to being just team mates. Wanting to live off that smile for the rest of the day, use it like a drowning man clinging to a raft.

Then Cristiano scores another one and another and runs to thank Bale for the assists - with that same wide eyed bright smile, that same smile that suddenly looks nothing like the sun anymore, looking like nothing less than pure unmitigated betrayal - and Bale jokes about how Cristiano will score again with Irina tonight, and James feels it all like a kick to the back. Her name jolting him, his life raft kicked aside, a sudden unexpected iceburg.

After training he changes alone away from everyone else, back turned, quickly. As if Cristiano's hands had left marks. Terrified of catching Cristiano's eyes, of seeing him after the shower, half naked or fully naked, with clothes on or not, how much he knows he won't be able to stop staring, blushing.

He knows he won't be sleeping with that memory; the sleeping without it. Knows that smile will bleed into all his dreams, bruise into him with the way it'll make him hope.


	3. Chapter 3

James had taken to staying at practice late, till after most of the others had gone. Wanting to prove himself, to the coach, to the fans, to his team mates.

Besides a few others, everyone else had already gone home. He'd discovered the joys in being one of the last to leave. Liked listening to the sounds of the stadium emptying, the way a school feels different when it's deserted. Conquerable, suddenly yours.

With nothing but the radio for company, he's drying off after his shower, in just his underpants, hair dripping wet, when his head jerks up to see someone storm in, the thunder of footsteps behind them. Cristiano. Deliberately loud, letting out his frustration with each footfall. Bag thudding to the floor, locker slammed open.

James stares at him for a few seconds in surprise, before looking down, away.

It's only the two of them there, but Cristiano doesn't acknowledge him.

He hadn't scored in the previous game and had left straight after the whistle had blown, before the others. Hadn't made any comments to the press. Had arrived to training earlier than everyone else that morning. James has learned that Cristiano is harder on himself than anyone else when he doesn't score, when he believes he's had a bad game. And when he did, he wouldn't join in with the joking during training, would be snippy and short, but mostly at himself. Would stay later than everyone else after practice to push himself a little further, go over and over the same thing until it was beyond perfect, punish himself until he was satisfied.

The radio continues playing out, the song now too upbeat for the mood in the room. Trying to dry his hair off as quietly as possible, he can't help but notice that Cristiano barely moves. Doesn't begin to take his clothes off, to shower. Sitting there on the bench, his head in his hands. Sulking, or upset. Defeated in a way that hurts at him, his hero looking so mortal.

Without thinking he says, "You played great."

Cristiano's head jerks towards him, as if noticing him there for the first time. It's been three days since it happened, three days and it's the most they've said to each other since. Cristiano's eyes remain harsh, expression cold, as if James had interrupted him from something, had said something uncalled for.

He looks back down quickly, embarrassed. As if Cristiano cared what James thought about his play. And ashamed, at how he seemed to insist on being so obvious.

He hadn't been able to stop staring at Cristiano since it had happened. Or staring at the floor whenever he got too close. The way he always craved his attention; craved his avoidance.

It haunted him, and at night he'd found himself chasing the ghosts of Cristiano's hands. Like a type of exorcism. Wonders if he was going to be forced into spending the rest of his life touching himself at night thinking about another man's hands. The way his body feels ruined now, forever in some way belonging to Cristiano.

And this is how Cristiano is, he's learning, you think you're close to him one day, like maybe something even more than friends, but even with his tongue in your mouth and his hands on your skin you're never close to him, not really.

He goes back to focusing on getting dressed. He's going to learn to ignore Cristiano. He's going to get good at it, practice it the way he practices kicking a ball. He's going to get over this and at some point in time none of this will bother him, will be something he'll laugh at. At some point this will be old news. He'll get a girlfriend, a supermodel, he's going to have to--

"Cristiano --"

Standing there in front of him now, staring at him. Still shirtless in only his jeans, James feels naked. Too naked to look up at him, afraid of how much he gives away.

Cristiano is shaking his head and doesn't say anything and doesn't even really look at him, before he sort of sighs heavily, pressing in and kissing him.

James is so surprised he can't even kiss him back, just sort of stands there, letting him press his mouth against his for a second, until Cristiano stops, and makes a sort of hungry growling noise, pressing back against him harder. Startled, James stumbles backwards, hitting his head against his locker room door. Cristiano's hand reaches out to cup the back of his neck instinctively, not breaking away from the kiss, seizing on James's open mouthed shock to go further.

James's own hands reaching to cling to Cristiano's shirt, his waist, to keep from falling. Cristiano responds by pressing his thigh into James's crotch, so that he's pinned against the locker, helpless, can do nothing but be kissed. Everything already sensitive and too much, heat flaring up his spine, that adrenaline hit of his tongue in his mouth making him sigh into the kiss. Breathless already. Cristiano presses his thigh against him harder and harder in turn, grinding into him. James whimpering, spread open, unable to move away from the kiss, even if he wanted to. Cristiano's mouth carving into him, stealing him from himself again. Hands roving over James's shirtless back, down the curve of his ass, holding him there to kiss him, making James start a little with how much he likes that, Cristiano wanting him like this. Hungry for everything.

They lose time in the kiss, parts of themselves. James leaving damp handprints over Cristiano's shirt, trying to pull him closer to him and he’s never close enough. Whimpering at the need for more, hard and weak and wondering when Cristiano will finally release him.

Until Cristiano pulls back and leans into him like that, inhaling him. Eyes closed, like James is the oxygen in the room.

He pulls away a little more then and looks at him, truly, for the first time since he'd entered. James's eyes are wide and black, his lips swollen red, looking like he had in his bedroom the other night. He holds him like that to him for a second more, as if trying to decide on something, memorize something. Before taking another deep breath and breaking away.

"Cris--" James tries again, before he can snap out of it. Apologetic almost, for how much he needs this.

Without looking back at him, Cristiano grabs his jacket and bag, the door slamming shut behind him.

James finding himself more shaken and disorientated than after the first time they'd kissed, than the first time he'd ever kissed anyone. So disorientated that even walking is hard, stumbling a little to finish putting on a shirt, his shoes. Like he'd just been held down under water, legs still dragged down by the weight of him.

Skin burning with the memory of him all through the night.

*


	4. Chapter 4

That next night, Cristiano sends him a text. Asks him if he has any plans, if he wants to come over and watch a movie with him at his place.

James is nervous, anxious like it's a big game he's going to. Being around him had become increasingly dangerous, like approaching a high-voltage line. They're just friends watching a movie together, hanging out together, that's what friends do. Thinking about it so much as he heads over there, about everything that's happened between them, going through an entire packet of mints before he arrives. Trying to wipe out the taste of dread and desire curled up in his gut.

He sits on the edge of his bed as the movie starts to play, almost formally, taking small sips from the beer. Conversation polite, about training, about work. James reduced to barely knowing what to say in case he says too much, says the wrong thing, ruins this again. Unable to look at him for too long now, afraid his eyes are more confessional than anything his mouth can say. They're just friends and this is what friends do. Friends and everything Cristiano does is a distraction, an obsession. The way his shirt sits tight on his skin, so that when he stands up to get him another beer, James can see his stomach muscles defined through it. How, when he laughs at something James says, James feels it all the way through his chest, his ribs, his lungs. Like being ripped open by it, something unpredictable, dangerous, unfurling around it. That voltage line sparking. Friends with their knees pressed together on the bed as they sit, Cristiano's hand casually resting there as he leans over to get something and it's the only thing James can think about.

Half way through the movie when he feels a hand at the back of his head, and it's Cristiano pulling him in towards him, it's James not resisting, not fighting anything. Because this is what it's like to fall, this is the earth falling in his direction.

His mouth already open, eyes closing, breath stalling; bracing himself for the landing.

Cristiano kisses him hard at first, tongue slick and fast, like he's trying to silence something about James, prove something to him. And in a way it does, everything melting away under it. The tension breaking, everything a relief, a release. Being able to breathe after being held under for so long. Kissing him and kissing him until his pulse stops fluttering; until it starts. Cristiano moves on top of him, straddling him, and James's arms come up around him, pulling him down, wanting all of him, needing him everywhere. That drug of being so close to him, and it was never enough. Cristiano kissed him and he ached with the need for more. He didn't know how much kissing he would ever get from him, and even then, how much would be enough.

Grinding his crotch against his through his sweats as they kissed in a way that makes James jerk up, pant. He can feel how hard Cristiano is through the material, the thickness of his erection rubbing up against his own making him moan into him at the contact. Cristiano likes that sound, chases it, thrusting his hips harder against his. Grinding into each other, kissing like two teenagers making out in a parent's bedroom. Desperate for contact, fumbling, sloppy, messy. Cristiano makes James come in his hand first, then lets James touch him when he comes after. Shy hands moving along with his, letting James kiss him as he does.

Laying there together for a moment after in a heavy breathed silence.

Cristiano's laughing as he stands up, unprompted, a hand through his hair. As if this is all a long personal joke to him. But James is laughing too, so heady and alive with Cristiano that he doesn't know what to do, how to keep it all inside. The way being around him makes him feel broken open.

Cristiano grins at him for a second, tosses him a towel. When he comes back out of his bathroom James is already dressed, standing at his door, waiting for him.

Dropping him off at his place later, and they're both giggling and giddy, back to joking about training, about work. They don't talk about it, about what they've started doing. But before James leaves, before he opens the door to get out, Cristiano leans forward and kisses him again suddenly in the darkness of the car.

James freezes, breath stuttering, and when he pulls back, his cheeks are flushed all the way red, and he can't look at Cristiano anymore. He almost drops his jacket as he gets out, stumbling over his words as he says goodbye. Cristiano only grinning at him, wishing him a good night as he drives away.

*


	5. Chapter 5

The first time Cristiano goes down on him is a week later in a hotel room, after a game where James had assisted him in a hat trick. Showering, changing into bathrobes, ordering smoothies and salads from room service that would've made their dieticians proud. Feeling giddy from the game, like kid's on a sugar high, too awake to sleep. Playing FIFA together half heartedly until it gets late, trying to do things just to make the other laugh. Scoring own goals, having their keeper run around the field. Showing each other cheats and glitches, making players disappear, levitate or crawl along the floor. 

They don't talk about how this has become a thing. Spending time together at night. The way their mouths keep finding each other. The way their hands do. How he and Cristiano look at each other all the time now, even when they know they’re not supposed to. Trading glances during training matches and staring each other down over lunch in the canteen. The way the world has become an electrical storm between them.

Cristiano never attempts to hide that he's been staring at him, smiling in a low dangerous way like he enjoys getting busted. It's almost always James who has to look away first, find something on his clothes to adjust, scratch some kind of itch. The way Cristiano's gaze makes him too aware of himself, jittery under his skin, the walls of himself pressing in.

How James sometimes doesn't know what he's meant to be doing when they're not kissing. How everything in the absence of their kissing speaks of it. Hands glancing against each other too long, or too quick. The way James is either silent or nothing but words and nerves without it. Saying too much when he arrives at Cristiano's room that night, building up barriers with his voice. How afraid he's become of that kiss. How badly he needs it.

Then Cristiano says, "Wait, wait! Look, look!" and runs to the James avatar with his own. Pressing a series of buttons, the Cristiano character lunges at the James one, awkwardly rubbing his mouth against his. They both burst into laughter, nudging at each other as their characters fall over, mouths against each other, limbs at odd angles.

Cristiano turns to him then, tackles him underneath. James is giggling and shrieks even more as Cristiano starts to kiss him now, clumsily, like the characters in the game. Arms jutted out at angles, rubbing his mouth on top of his, licking against his face playfully. James only half heartedly trying to duck away from him between his laughter. Eyes and voice bright and real, everything about this moment alive.

"Maybe we should show those developers how it really looks for the next game, huh?" Cristiano is whispering. He flicks his tongue inside James's mouth properly now, lets James's come out to meet his. His hand slipping inside his underpants, stroking him there. James has been hard since they'd been alone together, almost always was now, and he hums a low shivery approval around the kiss. Feeling like it's the first time he's breathed in that night at all.

After a moment, Cristiano leans back and tugs James's underpants down, admires having him under him like this. The way the tip of his cock is flushed the same deep red as his lips, his cheeks, in a way that makes Cristiano's mouth water. He glances back up at him again for a second, at his heavy lidded eyes, the way James is gone like this, completely surrendered. Before James knows what he's doing, Cristiano shifts down and starts flicking his tongue across the tip.

James gasps at the contact at first, hips jolting up, as though taking an electric shock. When Cristiano doesn't stop, keeps sucking, kissing at him there, he raises himself up to his elbows, almost like he's about to protest, move Cristiano away, like it's too much already.

But Cristiano ignores him, continues to suck at his wetness there, tasting him. The way his skin tastes dark and bright and piercing, like the trembling air before thunder. Cristiano's own eyes hooded, dark with intent, determined. James's stomach muscles flickering with every touch of his tongue, hips shaking as Cristiano takes him into his mouth fully, pressing down, in. He lets out a low deep groan, like this has been something his body has been needing all day, all his life. An ache ripping him inside out. Everything about him coming undone. Falling back against the bed and Cristiano has to hold his hips down to keep them from bucking up against him completely.

He knows exactly how to suck, the right rhythm to give, and it's intense, like the first time he's ever been given head, as if he's never had anything like this before. And it's  _Cristiano._  Cristiano with his cock in his mouth, doing this for him. James's hands reaching for his hair, wanting to touch him. Hesitating, stretching out next to him instead. Fingers curling around the bedspread as Cristiano continues to work on him, and James is shaking.

When he hits the back of Cristiano's throat without seeming to struggle even a little, it's like everything. Lights exploding star-like in front of his eyes. He makes a sound so strangled and hitched that Cristiano's eyes blink up at him, concerned. Then Cristiano does it again, and again, continuing to watch him as he does. He doesn't look away from James' face, needing to see him like this, the way he's completely his like this, and like that, James comes apart in his mouth.

Cristiano moves back over him. James's eyes are closed, his breathing ragged, and he's shaking. He pulls him to him, concerned a little, "Hey."

James curls right into him, pressing his face into his chest. His arms reaching around his waist, under his bath robe. Shaken and drunk on him, needing to feel him skin to skin, hold onto all the reality he could find of him.

"You're so sensitive," Cristiano's whispering. But he's smiling, like he likes that about him.

James sneaks back into his own hotel room an hour later, dazed, like he's taken in too much sun.

The way kissing Cristiano has started to make him feel the most lucid and clear headed he's ever been in his life.

The way it makes him feel fuzzy, complicated, and so so far away.

*


	6. Chapter 6

At first everything happens all at once, or not at all.

The days after they go back to being acquaintances, back to being colleagues. The casual brush off. A gaze that doesn't hold. James left feeling like he's a step far behind, a step out of beat. In the training ground with his new team mates and with Cristiano.

In its absence, James would find himself nervous, wound up. Worried about what they were, who he was, what this all meant.

But it was like slipping into an addiction, stepping into a hurricane, losing control.

The team's on fire, never losing. Cristiano scoring hat tricks almost every week, and this thing between them is like playing with a live wire. A release and a motivation. Teasing each other during training, assisting each other on the field. Hands and gazes brushing after goals, excuses to touch, hold each other. That thrill of being close to him, that risk. The way everything is reduced when Cristiano's hands linger, reach for his. Eye contact starving the world to just the two of them. Everything meaningless under the weight of his arm around his shoulder after a goal, that warm demanding gaze on his skin. The way it makes James feel discovered under it, like he's never existed before Cristiano looks at him, kisses him.

He’ll stand next to him before games and ask him questions about things casually. Methods of attack, tactics, as if James has become his coaching confidant. And once, he feels a hand on his ass and turns just in time to see him walking away in the opposite direction.

Left feeling like an unmade bed, a wound up phoneline. Every part of him a mess, disconnected, reconnecting, brand new.

The way Cristiano starts calling him hermano, bro, parceiro. Words that aren't enough and are too much at the same time.

All of it pressing against the walls of him.

Cristiano doesn't have to tell him that he can't tell people about this, that nobody can find out.

Because at first he can't even say his name out loud to anyone he knows. The word alone confessional, a mess of red cheeks and his stutter. The way he has to look away when he only thinks about him sometimes, hears his name. Everything leaking from him.

He can’t even think about what he wants besides more. Him always there next to him, ruffling his hair after goals and making him laugh.

He tells himself things. That this is all just escapism, a way to work off steam, a way for team bonding. This is his idol, this is his hero, who wouldn't be excited to be around them. That none of this has to mean anything. Lets himself believe he believes it.

He ignores the way he's started to crave him, the raw liquored taste of him, that heroin shot of his tongue in his mouth, that foreign hand between his legs. How even the warm scent of him during training can be enough to dizzy him, like inhaling gas fumes.

And at night, that discovery of each other, discovery of himself.

Casually heading over to Cristiano's place, under the pretense of watching movies, playing video games. That initial unbroken awkwardness when he arrives, as if only having seen each other for the first time that day. Asking about his son, about his mother, about the weather.

In the silences before a kiss, James felt as mute as he'd ever been. His stutter an inflammation. It gave part of him up, always.

Even his hands not knowing how to speak. Sitting with them loosely in his lap as Cristiano sits next to him, hungering for more. Pining and restless, skin just as voiceless.

Everything about him on edge, until Cristiano reaches for him.

Sometimes it's in his bed half way through the movie, the pretense still in effect. James trying to focus on the movie, on the plot, as if there'll be a pop quiz about it at the end. Trying hard to commit to his role as oblivious passerby. Trying hard to learn to be that kind of person.

Other times, Cristiano kisses him as soon he steps into his room. A hungry demanding kiss that gives James a world he only has seconds to adjust to, like surfacing too quickly.

Cristiano deciding when the silence or noise of them is enough.

Then, that noise of them: groping, fumbling. Dry humping, making out like teenage tear aways. Kissing like an uninterrupted conversation, every word a run on sentence, every breath the start and ending of something. Trying to find each other under clothing, skin craving skin. How much easier it is to speak like this. He lets James take his shirt off, his hands seeking the muscles on his chest, his stomach, Michelangelo's David come to life. He likes the way James watches him like that; eyes black, lips wet. How restless and needy his hands feel over him. Obsessed with trying to learn what Cristiano likes, Cristiano using his own hands to show him. Before possessing his, knowing how to touch and when, where to kiss and suck to drive James insane. 

How after, James is more confident, loose. Giggly and silly, as if drunk. The way Cristiano's the opposite, all sleepy and slowed down.

Sometimes he gets out of bed right away, throwing on something to wear to drop James off. Other times, they lay there separately together in the silence of their hushed breathing for minutes. James stilled, afraid of sound. This wild untame thing between them so easily broken, lost. Swallowed up by the noise of clothes being put on, throats being cleared, footsteps heading to doors.

How, one time that first week, James had turned to look at him. Cristiano's eyes had been dreamy and unfocused, not backing down from James's. Letting that silence build back into noise around them. As if something else were slowly conspiring between them. How much James wanted to kiss him again right then, keep kissing him. To not have to go back home. To have this mean something. Cristiano continuing to only stare back, eyes dark, mouth parted. As if about to say something, but not.

James had to look away first, giggly and self conscious. Feeling like he'd given himself up, getting up, ready to leave.

How Cristiano had then taken his time getting out of bed, lazily putting his sweats back on, forgetting his shirt. That carved marble of his body a distraction as Cristiano checked his phone, fixed his hair. Standing in front of James to ask what time he was free that weekend. The way James's hands had felt starved right then, unable to touch him. How he wished some part of him had the words to ask how to stay. The way he doesn't; averts his gaze, stuffs his hands into his pockets. Cristiano finally putting on a sweater, skin erasing the night from sight.

James mumbling something about his family being over, but he'll be free later, at night.

Cristiano cocking a smile, then ruffling his hair as he'd walked out with him, "Night's always good for me, parceiro."

The way his hair had felt like television static the next morning, the way his heart did.

 *


	7. Chapter 7

That television static in his head for days afterwards.

And, days later on a night out with his family, James is distracted. Checking his phone for the time, for messages.

That adrenaline hit of his name flashing there. Cristiano saying, "You coming over? x". James making excuses to his family. He has training early the next morning. He's been feeling tired all day. A big game coming up soon. Dinner unfinished, conversations ending half way, a Mary Celeste in his wake. The way he almost drops his phone in the car when another message comes through. A shot of Cristiano's underpants, his cock bulging through, his other hand resting against it for emphasis, the words, "How long you gonna be? x".

He's there in 15 minutes.

Cristiano answering the door in his bath robe. Hair and skin still damp and flushed from a shower, leading him inside.

"You want something to drink?" turning to him in his bedroom.

James says "Si" in a whisper, but before Cristiano can ask what, James is behind him. His hands around his waist answering for him. Under the robe, feeling for those underpants. The way Cristiano stalls for a second. James sliding his hands lower, over the material, seeking that promise of him.

How real and full and warm he is like that under his touch, the way he jerks a little on contact. James's hand palming over and over, an obsession. His throat is dry and he needs a drink.

Cristiano finally turns to him, eyebrows raised a little, smirking, as in a question.

James's eyes lowered. His own hand resting there now, like in the photo.

He tugs at the material until he pops out, is rewarded by the way Cristiano grins dazedly at him, presses his hips into his fist a second for more. He liked it when James takes the lead.

The tip a little wet already, and James can't stop staring. He traces along the underside for a second, skin there so hot it could sear into him. How much James wants it to.

Glancing up, his heart through his chest, that feeling of peaking on a run. He leans down to try to press a kiss to it. Then quickly, he tries to open his mouth around it. Nervously, eagerly; he'd been fantasizing about this for what feels like forever now. Weeks of wondering how he'd taste. Craving making Cristiano come into his mouth like this.

But Cristiano hisses and jerks back, brushes his cock away, pulls him back up to kiss him for the first time that night instead.

Disorientated, heart pounding wildly in his chest, he lets himself be kissed. Embarrassed, wondering if he'd been doing it all wrong, badly.

Cristiano still smirking, the way he does when James tries to do something too impressive in training, amused by him.

Back to business casual, clearing his throat. "I could you get a beer?" a grin, "Something a little stronger, if you need it?"

Cristiano's half hard cock sitting out on his stomach like that, shamelessly, and how is James meant to speak, how is James meant to know what language is, know that anything but desire exists. His mouth is dry, his throat is dry, his hands are dry.

When Cristiano finishes pouring himself something, James is on his knees in front of him.

Cristiano would laugh, should laugh, but James's lips are wet and his eyes are dark and the sight of him like this is all too distracting.

Before he can stop him again, James leans in and covers the tip with his mouth, like in a kiss. Rewarded by how Cristiano twitches against his mouth; his gasp. He isn't deterred this time, wants it too much. Hands to his hips to hold him like that to him, slides his mouth over him completely, sucking him in. Another breathy curse in Portuguese, Cristiano's hand reaching for his hair, gently stilling him for a second like that. A little too much teeth, but he's afraid he'll stop, move away.

James continues unabated, wanting to taste him, feel him inside like this. It's happened too many times inside his head and the reality of his skin is so much softer against his mouth than in his memory, against his tongue, and his thirst overwhelms him.

Blinking up to see Cristiano watching him. Not smirking, not grinning anymore. His lips parted, his hands in his hair. It's the darkness in Cristiano's eyes, how vulnerable and wide open he looks like this that makes James press back down. Wanting more, getting into a rhythm, the sounds of his breathing and sighing urging him on.

How familiar and different he tastes there; sour, dark, the taste of sex. Wanting more, wanting all of him inside. Pressing in, a gag reflex, pushing past it, hands moving to work along the base, the way Cristiano's own hands on him had taught him felt good. His eyes starting to water, Cristiano hissing and cursing, bucking up into his mouth.

Discovering him as he starts rocking hard and fast against his mouth; letting go.

On his knees, looking up at Cristiano like that with his breathing raw, eyes wide, mouth parted, lips dripping wet.

It's all too much for Cris, too distracting, and he pulls him up, pulls him into bed with him. Pulls that mouth towards him, under him. That wet mouth that tastes like him, like them. Undressing him; hands over, around him. James too sensitive already, whining.

Kissing and kissing him like that, getting back into that rhythm of James's mouth, until both are panting, grinding into each other, hard, rutting. James with his neck arched back, that surrender of him, giving him everything, and God, Cristiano loves getting him like this, nothing but exposed need. Wanting more of it, all of it. Leaning down to suck kisses into his neck, pressing his mouth to his ear, "When are you gonna let me fuck you?"

A silence of hushed breaths between them. James quiet, still.

Cristiano pulling back a little; James' eyes shut tight, hands trembly against his back, "I've never -- I've never -- not with a--"

Oh. James's cheeks flushing, not opening his eyes, hands tensing on Cristiano's back. As if worried he'll leave.

_Oh._

Hesitating for a second with him, that sudden vulnerability halting. Dragging him back to reality, that daylight of them.

James is arching his hips back up, body seeking him out, like he's lost him. Hands moving to the back of Cristiano's neck, urging him back down, asking. His eyes still shut tight, his body a plea, a please.

He moves down to kiss him, silencing himself, silencing James. The instant way James's body sighs into it, how he tries to keep the kiss inbetween breaths, a drowning man asking for nothing but water. Desperate, needy. Cristiano moving his mouth back to his neck, sucking in kisses, hard. Rutting against each other again, that dizzying heat of their bodies colliding. Cristiano starting to work them both off in his hands. James arching his hips up, fucking himself into Cristiano's fist, eyes shut, making desperate low hungry noises, everything about him begging at him. Hands lacing tight through Cristiano's hair, keeping his mouth pressed hard into his neck until he comes, until they both do.

Brushing his teeth in the bathroom after, Cristiano makes eye contact with his reflection.

A moment of quiet pause in that ocean of breaths and constant touching. That sudden moment of sobriety while drinking, that moment of _Oh_. Pulling him back into himself.

They have to talk. The longer he waits, the harder it'll get. How awkward training could become, playing together, games. He spits out the paste, rinses his mouth out. His mind rinsing and repeating conversations. Everything easy, ordered inside his head.

James is turned away when he comes back out, curled onto his side. Looking lost in his large bed among his pillows and sheets, something washed ashore. He thinks about how cold it is outside. The trembly way James gets when he's nervous, how hard it is for him to even look at him at times, in ways that guilt into him.

He slips into bed besides him, tucks himself against his back.

James sighs and leans into him as he does, as if having held in a breath, as if having doubted he'd return.

He holds James to him like that, presses his mouth to the back of his neck.

That moment of sobriety gone, surrendering back into the night of them.

It's the first time they fall asleep together and Cristiano decides whatever he has to say can wait.

* 


	8. Chapter 8

Daybreak and Cristiano's making coffee when James walks into his kitchen, dressed only in yesterday's underpants, a sleepy self-conscious smile.

Cristiano bids him a good morning, gestures to the coffee he's just made, the jar of sugar James needs with it. He's learned already that James likes to take everything so sweet it made his teeth ache.

He goes back to drinking his own, only to feel arms tight around his waist, a warm mouth nuzzling into the back of his neck. James inhaling him in for a few seconds, like a dopey kid.

He stalls, letting James cling to him like that for a moment, morning light breathing in around them.

Then he turns, intending to remind him that they need to be in training the next hour, remind himself. Switch this into the professional, not personal.

James isn't paying attention.

His eyes are lidded and dark and focused only on the way Cristiano's lips move as he speaks, mind scattered in the night, and he leans in for a kiss.

Cristiano freezes, not expecting this, an ambush. But James's dark eyes and full lips are hypnotic and he gets caught in their riptide; shuts his eyes, inhales around his mouth, his kiss, which is as dopey and sleepy as James looks. He withdraws a little, ready to move on, start the day, make this about something that isn't them. To go back to behaving like coworkers, like team mates who aren't practically fucking each other every other night.

James's eyes and mouth stay there. Close, parted, half in a dream -- and he leans in again with intent, hand to the back of Cristiano's neck, slipping his tongue inside, reclaiming Cristiano's mouth with his. A soft, slow, heady kiss. A post sex kiss. For a moment, it's spellbinding. The world reducing to nothing but taste, sense, feel. That deep morning taste of him. Slipping back into a dream of him, that unreality of them. 

Kissing and touching outside of sex feeling more intimate, more real; a boundary crossing. Daylight normally chasing away their shadows.

They have to talk. This isn't what -- he can't let this be what it is.

Harder to convince himself of that when James is stood there in his kitchen in the morning, hips pressed against his, kissing him like they're lovers, like they belong to each other, and he's just -- he's just letting him.

They have to talk.

He inhales and turns back away again, clearing his throat.

"So, uh -- your coffee's ready, and we gotta get down to, umm--" losing his place -- "for the - umm," his mind still scattered in dreams, "the uh, training" a blink, "--with the team."

Awkwardly reaching out a hand to James's upturned face, ruffling his hair suddenly, like he's his friend, his mother, his brother. Not knowing what to do, who to be with those wide open eyes on him like that, a mouth that won't leave his alone.

Shaking his head at himself, uncomfortable with being so affected. Trying to finish his coffee, needing the caffeine. That's what grown ups did in the morning, they drank coffee, talked work, got dressed. They definitely did not get into kissing matches with their team mates.

James only continues to smile at him through those half open eyes, looking like a sleepy satisfied cat. Taking long sips of his own coffee, telling him how good it tastes, all that sugar he needed.

"Sweet. Like you," and that bright smile, those earnest eyes. Almost shy at having revealed something of himself.

Cristiano looking back down at his own coffee. Whatever they are, whatever this is, crossing, blurring, right there in front of him. With James's vulnerability, how real he is. Scary, realizing, he's dating someone he can break, with too many veins exposed, who offers himself so easily.

Another sigh, more for effect. Reminding himself that they don't exist in a dream, that they're both awake. "I'm gonna start heading out now and you can go a bit later -- so they won't notice, okay?"

James is still soft, nods, smiles, mouth to his coffee, keeping those warm eyes on him until Cristiano turns around, leaves to get dressed.  
  
And after, before Cristiano can leave, James leans in for another kiss goodbye. That wide open smile, veins all laid bare for him.

A breath of a pause before Cristiano ducks his head away a little before James can connect, an arm reaching out to ruffle his hair again like he's a little kid, like James is his little brother. Doing it for a second. Then, a second too long. Laughing at this moment to himself suddenly.

James's eyes confused at his unspoken joke, searching.

Moving to say something and Cristiano moving to say something, both stopping, smiling again. That broken intimacy of two people who don't actually know each other that well.

"I'll see you -- later, okay?" Cristiano offers, forcing a grin at him for lack of words, taking the edge off anything he knows James could misinterpret too negatively.

Breathing in when he steps outside, escaping back to the world where he doesn't feel so caught out, so caught in. A world where he wasn't about to be caught out, caught in.

That next week during games or in training, the closest James gets to Cristiano is nothing but a hand in his hair.

***


	9. Chapter 9

*

Days of silence later and James approaches him before a game. Hovers around him in the lockers. Tries to open his mouth to say something, tell him a joke.  
  
Cristiano holds his eyes for a second, before turning away.

That unspoken conversation taking place in the way James's smile drops. In the way James is the first to get dressed, first to leave, not speaking to anyone else, not saying goodbye, in the thud of the door behind him. In the way Sergio's eyebrows raise and he glances at Marcelo, who shrugs as if the new kid is going through his new kid problems. And Cristiano's an asshole, he knows this, but he tells himself this is the easiest way to handle things.

On the way to their next game, he's next to Pepe on the coach, the others listening to music too loud on their headphones, cracking dirty jokes, talking girls.

Illara's looking up in confusion, "This magazine says you should lick a girl's belly button to get her off."

"I do not think girls like that," Marcelo is laughing, shaking his head.

He's holding the magazine up defensively, "According to Cosmopolitan they do." Cristiano and the others laugh. "What about you and Irina then Cris, what are your underwear models into, what're they like?"

Cristiano catches James's eyes from the seat opposite them, but he quickly looks away, focusing hard on the scenery outside his window. He thinks about the pair of Bronzini underpants he'd found one morning a week back, tucked low inside his sheets. A night James must've gone home wearing nothing underneath. He's grinning suddenly, shrugging. "I'd recommend it."

He zones out of their conversation again until Nacho's saying his name. "I can't believe you're still single James."

James looks up startled from his phone like he's just been accused of something. But on hearing the question and seeing them turning to look at him, he's shrugging, laughing, embarrassed, like he doesn't know, hasn't thought about it, doesn't want to think about it.

"Lend him one of Irina's supermodel friends, Cris."

Cristiano keeps his eyes on James, who has taken to staring at his phone like it holds the answers to the universe, "I don't think they're his type."

Cristiano can see the corners of James's mouth upturn a little. It's hard not to feel a little smug.

"What's your type then, James?"

James is still shaking his head, not looking up, not wanting any part of this conversation. "I -- I, don't know, any. It doesn't matter to me."

"That narrows it down, any," laughing, "We'll set you up with Ancelotti maybe."

"My sister is single," Marcelo adds, "and she's got a massive crush on James."

Sergio raises his voice, "Your sister is 13."

"He can wait for her... You're saving yourself for her, aren't you James?"

They're all laughing and James's skin is flushed.

"You're not worried about your stutter, are you?" Illara says then suddenly, leaning across the aisle to speak to him. "I know girls who think that's cute."

James keeps his eyes on Illara for a second, then they flutter down, and he stares at the phone in his hands, but not at the screen, frozen suddenly. Mouth opening and closing a little, as if wanting to say something, but not. His eyes shiny, even his fingers flushing pink. How easy it was to find a vein on him.

"Maybe you should focus on your own sex life," Cristiano turns in his seat to look right at Illara. Expression serious, warning.

Illara raises his eyebrows at him, hands out apologetically like he hadn't intended to be rude.

When Cristiano turns back in his seat again, James is staring at him, but he instantly drops his gaze back down, shoulders hunched in. Staring at that phone on his lap like it's his lifeline, like he's trying to disappear.

"I am single by choice," Illara is adding on to the looks the others continue to give him.

"Yeah you _choose_ to keep telling yourself that," Marcelo says.

The others laughing together again.

The rest of the journey is full of jokes and talk about wives, girlfriends, children. Women the others think are cute in magazines, movies, tv shows. Cristiano half in and out of the conversations, corners of his gaze circling back to James, who doesn't say a word to anyone the rest of the ride in, headphones pressed to his ears, those shiny eyes downcast, never looking up from the screen.

*

Cristiano's scored his first goal of the game when a defender sticks a leg out and he trips, sprawling on the grass. The away crowd who'd been booing him all game drum up their whistles even more, the ref stalling with handing out a yellow like Cristiano's the pantomime villain. But he's grimacing and clutching his leg to the point that the medics come on. His knee injury from before. The one that almost kept him out of the World Cup. That same twinge, same knee.

Teammates circle and the medics are there and there's pokes and prods and he can move it, flex it. The pain only visceral. Exhaling with relief. Pepe giving him an arm to pull him up, evil eyeing the guy who'd tripped him who was still trying to argue his way out of the book.

As they're all parting, there's a hand to the back of his neck and he turns. Wide open eyes on him, a forehead creased in concern, James staring.

Cristiano dips his head towards his a little, smiling sheepishly, "A little cramp."  
  
James holds that uncertain frown for a second, but on Cristiano's smile, he grins back at him, that boyband perfect grin, relieved, squeezes his shoulder again, hand lingering before they part.

In the locker rooms later there's music blaring loud, everyone in the team laughing and joking. It's his third hat trick of the month and everyone's in a good mood.

He's drying his hair off, teasing with Marcelo, when someone brushes past him without saying anything in order to reach into the locker next to him. He glances at them sharply, only to see that it's James.

Towel hanging off his hips, water down his back lingering on tattoos, that musky aftershave he uses, and it's like a scent memory.

James in his bed after a game. James's mouth on his. James in his mouth--

He realizes he's been staring when James turns to look at him, and on realizing it's him, his gaze scatters back down, like he's in trouble for something, like he was the one caught staring. But he hesitates on seeing Cristiano's knee, that precautionary ice pack he has to strap on for a bit after most games, concern etching into his eyebrows again, "Is it okay?"

Surprised for a moment to hear him saying anything to him, but he's grinning, shaking his head, "You know me, just a bit of a drama queen."

He can see James trying to resist, like he shouldn't admit that he finds this funny, before that infectious grin spreads back across his face, Cristiano grinning back. For a second the world reducing again, to his eyes, his mouth. The humidity in the air suddenly an undercurrent, something inside Cristiano freeing up with speaking to him like this, thawing. It's the closest they've been in a week.

James looks away again like he's feeling caught, back to being punished. Turns his back on him now, reaching inside his locker for his shirt, his jeans. Trying to return to their routine of being colleagues, oblivious passersby's, and there's that hit of ice in his withdrawal.

Exhaling then, because he knows he's about to be doing something he shouldn't, he reaches out a hand to him, to his shoulder and not his hair. "I wanted to say thanks by the way," a low conspiring voice, a squeeze, "for the assist." Not a secret but he wants James to know he isn't saying it for anyone else's benefit. That he means it.

A shrugging shoulder, eyelashes still lowered, almost afraid to meet him head on now.

Another exhale, because he knows he's digging his own grave, that everything he's doing now is right at the top of things he should not be doing, but, "-- I know I can be an asshole sometimes." This time at a whisper, like it is a secret, a confession. An apology.

James's eyebrows raising, but he doesn't look back at him. Doesn't disagree.

Cristiano's bowed head still hovering there, and after a second, James is the one who cups his hand over his neck and then runs it through his hair a little, ruffling it. Then a lot.

Hand still in his hair, Cristiano's laughing at James's joke, at how he gets it, he does, at how surprising James can be, and James is laughing too, before he braves himself to look him in the eyes again, and -- there's nothing in James's eyes but that sweetness to him, that heart on his sleeve and in his eyes and in his mouth, and Cristiano finds himself staring at him a little. A lot.

The others giving them pats on the back as they head out, James resuming to pulling his shirt over his head, kicking his shoes on. Cristiano the one hovering.

Leaving together in groups and it's Cristiano with his arm around James's shoulder, like they're team mates again, comrades, and they're joking, laughing, talking the game. About Ancelotti's eyebrows when he thought he'd really been injured. Ancelotti's eyebrows after his third goal. Ancelotti's eyebrows when Ramos gave away another penalty in the 89th minute. James giggling and bright under his arm. That arm still around him as they reach Cristiano's car. Popping open the passenger door for him first, seeing that flicker of hesitation before he gets in, that second-guessing. They shouldn't, they shouldn't--

But Cristiano's letting James pick out the radio stations, part of him unwinding as the windows go down and James is blaring out Latino reggaeton. He's teasing James, telling him he sees Ancelotti's car behind them, then Perez's, watching James panic for a second, trying to duck down low as a car of old women pass them by. Cristiano yelling with laughter and James is hitting him on his arm, laughing at himself, telling him he's going to get him back for that.

Cristiano's smirk bright, making eye contact through the rearview mirror, "I've got something to look forwards to then." James's eyes sparkling as he grins self consciously, looks away. Teasing James had become a type of addiction, a foreplay.

Arriving at his place, in his bedroom, and with little as so much as eye contact in days, James is back to being fidgety, over thinking himself. He doesn't sit down and doesn't want a drink. Feigns renewed interest in his decor. Asks him what movies he hasn't seen yet. Doesn't hold his gaze for longer than a few seconds. Scared to trip back up over what it was that had lost him to Cristiano the last time.

It's a stutter that gets Cristiano. How James tries to fight it, the way his skin flushes and his head bows as he tries to repeat what it was he'd wanted to say, changing a word to get past it, how he pretends it doesn't bother him as his eyelids flutter with it - and Cristiano's mouth is on his, tonguing into those lost words on his lips, giving him his own. James inhaling, leaning up to it, taking in a gulp of him, and Cristiano's got his hands on his neck to still him, holding him there. How James is something real and genuine and his, incapable of pretense, all truth and veins in the way he needs him to be.

In bed later, like an apology, his mouth inbetween his legs for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes. Until James's thighs are trembling and he's saying his name in a chant, Cris, Cris, Cris. As if Cristiano's lost somewhere to him, out of reach. Cristiano letting him come inside his mouth, letting him taste himself on him. James soft, slack, in his arms.

It's not yet midnight and Cristiano could start getting dressed, he could.

But James is pressing his head into his chest, his arms around his waist under his duvet, like an animal finding somewhere safe to hide, and Cristiano lets him.

Presses his mouth to his forehead, lets him fall asleep like that.

*


	10. Chapter 10

There are things they don't talk about, talk around.

There's a Liga awards show and James gets invited to be a presenter.

When he walks into the dressing room that morning they're all talking about it, congratulating each other on their nominations, joking about the things they can try to get away with in their speeches. How Sergio needs to thank his hairstylist at least twice "--and hair colorist--" Iker chips in. How they 're all looking forwards to actually dressing up in anything besides sweatpants for a change. James feeling giddy being involved at all, just being around these players, being considered one of them.

Then there's Cristiano walking in, the way his presence changes the quality of the air in a room, everyone congratulating him on his nominations, cheeks being kissed.

Pulling his shirt on, and he's thinking about how maybe they could drive in together, sit next to each other during the show, be like an almost real couple.

As Carvajal leaves he turns to Cristiano and says, "I'll see you and Irina at the show tonight," and gives him a peck on the cheek.

James blinks a few times. Something like ice sliding down his back, his throat.

He'd never asked him about her, had tried not to even think about her, but one morning during training a week back Cristiano had leaned into him out of nowhere and said, "You know, Irina and I -- none of it's real, right? It's just for the media, for show."

James had only stared at him open-mouthed for a second, and Cristiano had shrugged, continued walking beside him, offering nothing more. He hadn't responded, acted like he hadn't heard him, that it hadn't meant anything to him. Hadn't known if he was meant to say if he was glad or relieved or what, something like panic and hope unfurling inside him.

When Cristiano's finished dressing, he bids goodbye to Iker and Keylor, then reaches him. James is pretending to be focused on putting his sneakers on, his shoelaces, in not acknowledging him unless he has to, but he feels that knot tighten inside, a noose around his neck. Something like panic and dread stalling inside him now. It's worst when Cristiano seems oblivious, kisses him on the cheek when he looks up, tells him he'll see him there tonight.

Watching him and the others leave, feeling like an outsider, like he's always been an outsider, but is only just now realizing it.

**

Limos, sports cars and paparazzi lining the street as he parks his car.

He's never really done anything like this before, walked a red carpet, and he's not sure what he's meant to be doing, what normal walking is even like with cameras and photographers crowding around yelling at him where to stand and where to look. The others are already there, greeting him with wide smiles, everyone with their wives and girlfriends, Cristiano with Irina, and James is alone. But he's relieved to see them all, have them put their arms around him, tease him, treat him like he belongs to them.

Irina is talking to a journalist about who designed her dress and Cristiano is standing behind the cameras waiting for her, the devoted boyfriend. As they're getting onto the topic of handbags and shoes, he turns towards James for the first time that night. Not really looking at him as he runs a hand through his hair and takes in a breath. "Is this thing on straight?" reaching to adjust his tie. He's nervous. All the award shows he's done and he's still nervous.

James hesitates for a second. As though it could be too intimate, right there surrounded by paparazzi and journalists, as though anyone could put two and two together seeing them like this. But he lets himself have this. Reaches up, tugs at Cristiano's bow, knuckles brushing against the warm skin of his throat. Holds his hand there for a second. "It is now."

Cristiano clears his throat and James feels the hum beneath his fingertips. "Thanks."

He inhales, drops his arms to his sides, clears his own throat.

"Why don't you come and sit with us out back?" Cristiano says then, voice a shrug, as though it doesn't matter to him either way.

James shakes his head and says, "Maybe," and they both know he won't.

The interview ends and by the time Irina walks over to them James is already inside.

*

During the show he has to stop looking over at them from his seat, at the way he leans in and whispers to her during the presentations, the way she laughs. The way it feels like ice on the tip of his spine, pennies in his mouth. It's not real, it doesn't mean anything, but then he doesn't even know what does anymore. Dissecting kisses and messages from Cristiano over and over again like they were carvings on the Rosetta stone, everything in a second or third language he couldn't understand.

The female host is cracking a joke about how she's seen Cristiano half naked more often than she's seen herself. The audience is laughing and James is checking his watch.

Then it's his turn to go on and his heart is on a dive like during a big game. Looking out at the packed crowd of people, players he's admired all his life, the TV crews and cameras, a blur of everyone staring at him. That silence in his throat before he announces the winner, his voice not faltering, and he's grinning as he sees it: Cristiano's name.

That roar of the audience applauding for him and blinking out, searching for him. Everything silencing again for just a second when he sees him there, grinning at him, the way there's nobody else in the room he'd rather be there for.

Then Cristiano's speaking and the noise of the crowd becomes real in his ears and pulse again and everything goes back to being a blur and he's being ushered back offstage and introduced to sponsors and hosts and champagne glasses are being clinked, and he's on his fourth glass and making conversation with the organizer's before the show's even over.

One of the hostesses telling him about a friend of hers from Colombia, how she's his biggest fan, and James is tipsy enough to be exchanging numbers, promising to send her a message. She's got dark hair and light eyes and leans in to touch his arm and chest as she talks, asking him if he misses it there, about Monaco, about the World Cup.

"You enjoying your time here in Madrid?" a touch to his arm, her smile tilting up at him, "I know the weather's probably not up to Colombia but..."

James feels an arm around his shoulder, someone solid standing behind him. Knowing that hit of cologne instantly, leaning into it without thinking, a part inside of him distilling, relaxing.

She's grinning extra wide now, "Congratulations on the award, Cristiano."

Cristiano turns to look at James as he responds to her, "Thank you."

James holds his gaze for a second and it's a second too much for him already, has to look away, take sips from his champagne. Lets them talk about the awards show together for a moment, about the Spanish weather, about the Champion's League. Half listening, half focusing on the weight of that arm on his shoulder.

"I thought the media said you two didn’t like each other," she says, voice playful.

"Who says we like each other?" James is smiling in response, pulling Cristiano into him a little more with his arm.

"Watch it," Cristiano teasing back, "I'll get you kicked back out of the team."

James nudging him, "See, he’s a diva."

All of them laughing, and James likes this, likes that they get to tease each other like this, likes having Cristiano's laughter close to his ear. The way he could stand like this all night, warm under his arm.

James is taking another swig from his glass, catching Cristiano's eyes as he does. The way he stares at his mouth, his head tilted back. With those eyes on him, James flicks his tongue around the rim for a second, looking away. The champagne and Cristiano's gaze warm as a blush down his throat.

The hostess is checking her phone and rolling her eyes, "My producer has a teleprompter emergency. But you really should try that Patacón Pisao Colombian restaurant I was telling you about before. I don't know how authentic it is, but we can always leave them angry online reviews if it isn't."

James is smiling. "I don't know where that is."

She's grinning, that hand back on his chest again, "I'd be happy to take you."

Cristiano's voice an edge, "James has a GPS, he'll be fine."

She laughs and leans in to give Cristiano a peck on the cheek, then one to James, lingering in a way that makes Cristiano want to clear his throat, makes him want to press a button to alert the building of a fire. "You have my number in case your GPS breaks."

That sharp edge of his voice in James's ear as she walks away. "Making friends, huh?"

"Where's Irina?" James counters, turning to take another sip from his glass.

"I could go find her," Cristiano offers back, just as coolly.

Standing together like that for a moment, Cristiano's arm still around his shoulder, neither moving away.

The waitress back around to top up their glasses. Cristiano turns her away, but James offers up his.

Cristiano's voice gentle in his ear now as she leaves, "How many have you had?"

"Four, maybe," embarrassed, a little, his skin suddenly clammy, hot.

"I think four's probably your number," Cristiano smiling kindly at him.

James sighing, taking a deep swig off the new glass, “What if five's my lucky number."

“Are you planning on getting lucky?” lightly, saying it without meaning it.

But James is alcohol brave, eyes dreamy and heavy lidded, fixed entirely on Cristiano's mouth. "Does it count if I'm not the one who gets lucky?"

Cristiano turns away, but James doesn't. Only inches away from his face, staring at him shamelessly.

He glances around the room to see if anyone else has noticed them, noticed James.

"It's getting late," he says carefully, dropping his arm from around his shoulder, checking his watch, avoiding the burn from those eyes.

They flicker down to Cristiano's mouth and back to his eyes again, in a way that makes time feel like it's slowing, thickening around them. "It's getting late," he repeats.

He takes another slow showy drink from his glass, head back, eyes closed. Looks at Cristiano, wiping his lips with the back of his hand. "I'm going to use the bathroom," eyes lingering on Cristiano's mouth as he does.

Then he turns and walks away.

**

James is fixing his tie in the mirror when Cristiano walks in.

He pauses for a second at the door, like he's not sure if he's in the right room, not sure if he should be in there at all, before approaching the sink. Turns a tap on, idly washing his hands. Nobody there but the two of them.

"We shouldn't be doing this." his voice low, warning. Eyes on James in their reflection.

"What are we doing?" James's eyes glinting back at him. The electric thrill of this moment sliding up the back of his spine.

The door opens and someone else walks in, the moment breaking. Cristiano turns the tap back on, dabbing water to his face, drying himself off with a paper towel. James busying himself with his tie, straightening it over and over again.

They wait for the other guy to leave in silence, turning to look back at each other in the reflection when the door shuts behind him. James's eyes still sparkling, a dare.

After a beat, he turns and walks into an empty cubicle.

His back is turned when Cristiano locks the door behind them.

He slips his hands onto James's waist under his jacket, pulling him close. James takes a breath and tilts his neck back, offering it to Cristiano. The sound of lips on skin, sighing. Cristiano sucking hard at a spot at the tip of his neck until James gets too sensitive, sighing turning to a low whine, turns around to look at him.

James's mouth parted and his eyes black, his hand reaching for Cristiano's tie again, though it needs no fixing. Smirking, enjoying this. How they both know what's about to happen, how they both want it.

He makes the first real move, tugging at his tie, pulling his mouth in towards his.

Soft, grazing kisses at first, waters tested. Cristiano not giving in, making James pull on his tie until he's all the way leaned in. Making James lead, take control.

Before his mouth is dripping back onto his neck, hips hard against his through clothing, James's hands everywhere, burning up on him; he could never remember how to stop touching him. Mouths like a match lit in oil, Cristiano pressing him into the door, taking back control, holding his head in his hands to kiss him better, deeper, making James helpless against him like that, knowing how much he liked that. Drawing out a whimper that gets his cock stirring hard against him through the material.

James reaching automatically for Cristiano's pants, but he jerks back away from him. James blinking up, confused.

Cristiano shaking his head already a little breathless, “Not here.”

His hands continuing to press along the bulge in those pants, brow furrowing. “You can't go back out there like that.”

Cristiano swallowing hard, not withdrawing from the touch, letting that ache from the contact burn into him. Like James was doing him a favor, like it was only polite. James kissing him again, flicking his tongue inside his mouth for a second, the kind of slick dirty kisses he gave when they were in bed together, when Cristiano's about to make him come.

James slipping down on to his knees in front of him and Cristiano's not stopping him. Undoing his belt, pulling him out. That desire, James's eyes black with it as he looks up at him, lips already wet, eyes hungry, mouth starved.

Pressing slippery kisses to the tip, flicking his tongue around and around his slit, Cristiano sucking in a breath. Those full lips red, red, red. Watching as he licks at the pre cum there, tasting him, looking up with his strung out gaze, those bright red lips smirking at him. An arrogance to him then that makes Cristiano's cock twitch against his mouth, before James takes him in, swallows him down. Then does it again and again.

Groaning, aching, putting his hands through James's hair, meeting that dare, thrusting hard into his mouth. James blinking up as Cristiano holds him in place to get the rhythm right. Getting him to give it to him how he needs it, James humming deeply in response. Knowing how much he liked it when he does that, how much he likes getting fucked. It's enough, getting James like that is enough and he's coming hard into his mouth.

Dazed, sensitive, tugging at James's hair gently, urging him up off the floor. James's eyes glazed, spaced out, lips dripping wet. Kissing him like that, messy sloppy kisses, how weak James is like this, how he gets in bed.

Holding him to his neck for a second, breathing him in. Letting him catch his breath against him, relax.

The only time they've been alone all day, a moment belonging to just them.

Cristiano opening the door, James following behind. Turning on the taps and rinsing his hands out again, James in the mirror running a hand over his hair, his mouth. Catching each other in the reflection, James's eyes still sparkling, wild, lips beautifully bruised red.

Grinning when they look away.

Leaving the bathroom together, skin flushed, feeling alive, like he’s had his head out of a car window, had risen from a deep sleep. Loving that smell of his on him, that taste lingering. Stealing glances and smiles at each other as they walk out, drunk on the night, each other.

Irina waiting for Cristiano so that they can leave together. The photographer's and crowds waiting for them.

She greets James, politely asking him how his night is going. James tells her it's going great, really really great, looking at Cristiano, still grinning, licking his lips. Wishes her a goodnight with a kiss to her cheek, then turns to Cristiano, tells him he hopes he sleeps well, that he'll see him tomorrow in training, as he leans in and presses his mouth to his cheek for a second.

Cristiano's eyes following behind him as he leaves.

*


	11. Chapter 11

At nights and during the day, James had started craving more.

Play wrestling after a game of FIFA to get each others clothes off first, rolling around in bed together laughing. James straddling him, knees around his waist, pinning his arms up over his head as he pulls his shirt away. Cristiano offering no fight, no resistance, eyes glinting. Letting James get whatever it is he's after.

He'd become obsessed with when this would become an actual thing, for words to help figure it out inside his own head. Something he could define, draw a line around, call by name.

He craved more of everything about him. More time with him. More intimacy. More kissing, touching; of whatever was coming next to come next.

With Cristiano like this under him, he starts rolling his hips against his through his underpants, grinding against him. Heat flaring into his crotch, his gut, his chest. Wonders if Cristiano's ever been fucked before, if that's something he likes.

He grunts a little under him, eyes shut, arching his hips up, enjoying the friction between them, how much he can feel James likes this.

And at training when he's on a run and his body hits that peak where he can feel nothing but the run, the adrenaline and the muscle and his lungs, and then in the hours at night in his own bed, all he'd started to think about was having sex with Cristiano.

Cristiano turns and rolls James back underneath him, into the position he was more comfortable in. On top, in control.

He'd been spending his nights fantasizing about what it'd be like to have his legs wrapped around Cristiano's waist. To have him inside him, be possessed by him, loved by him in that way.

Living in a constant state of distraction over what Cristiano had said to him weeks before. How he'd messed everything up by having said anything at all. How he should have just let it happen. It had to be easier than this, this dread, this suspense it could happen at any time; as though it would never happen at all.

Cristiano's smirking at him, in that amused by him way, and James shuts his eyes, lets Cristiano take the lead. Lets Cristiano pull his shirt up over his own head, run a hand along the muscles of his stomach, the dip of his hip bones, fingers teasing down, reaching for him in his underwear, and mid-kiss he takes him into hand. Makes James moan and grunt and thrust up, needing more of anything Cristiano could give him, craving every touch.

As Cristiano pulls up for air James blurts out, "I brought lube."

Cristiano pauses above him, surprised to hear him speak. They normally never really spoke in bed, it had become an almost wordless secretive exchange. As though speaking would break whatever this was, make it too real, make it something it wasn't. Cristiano's brow creasing in confusion, looking down at James's erection. His thumb glancing across the slit, making James flinch a little and him smile. "You prefer it with lube?"

James shuts his eyes tightly then, and there's a silence, before his voice mumbles out, "I thought we could -- fuck?"

His cheeks stained red, his whole body tensed, and he doesn't open his eyes.

Cristiano's taken aback, blinking at him, "...You want to have sex?"

James presses his lips together and nods his head forcefully, eyes shut tight.

He looks so vulnerable like that, so incredibly helplessly naked, that it shakes Cristiano up from his own arousal.

Not looking like someone who wants this, but someone who wants to get through it, do it for his sake.

That cold dawning moment of sobriety.

It's eleven at night, there's training tomorrow morning, they've been doing this together at night for weeks now and it feels wrong to him suddenly. The reality of what they're doing, of what they've been doing for the past month and a half waking up to him in a dark cold morning kind of way. Everything about them casting shadows.

He moves away to sit at the edge of the bed, runs his hands over his face and sighs. He gets up and starts pulling on some sweats, a shirt, glances at the prone figure of James still laying there on the bed. Helpless, nervous, waiting.

Waiting for Cristiano to get whatever he wants, whether James really wants it or not. Like he's a thief, like he's been robbing this kid blind. He can't stand the sight of it, can't stand himself with it.

"I'll drive you home," he offers, voice soft, turns his back and waits for him. Doesn't want to have to see the look on his face as he gets dressed.

It's a minute before he can hear James moving up out of bed. Listens to him picking up his clothes, his bag, hurriedly, dropping and picking them up again. Waiting at the bedroom door until he's beside him.

When Cristiano catches a glance at him, James's eyes are cast down, his shirt inside out, jacket and bag clutched in his hands like a refugee fleeing a scene, and Cristiano instantly looks away. They don't speak as they head to his garage and get into his car. Sitting in a silence that cuts into him in the drive to his place.

He knows he's the first guy James has ever been with. He'd known that the first time he'd kissed him, long before that even. It had thrilled him at the time, played on his ego, but now it makes his stomach tighten, his throat dry.

All those conversations Cristiano's been meaning to have taking place in that silence between them now. In the way they can't look at each other, the words they don't have for each other.

Cristiano steals glances at him through the rear view mirror until they reach a red light. When he does, James isn't looking out the window, but down at his lap, lost in himself. His eyes still glassy and mouth down turned, in a way that makes Cristiano feel so guilty he doesn't try and look at him again until they arrive.

Parking his car, James quickly does the seat belt, picks up his bag, reaching for the door handle. Fleeing that crime scene of them.

Cristiano takes out a hand to touch his arm then, needing to say or do something before he leaves.

All he can think to offer is, "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

James keeps his eyes down but hesitates there with Cristiano's hand on him. He swallows hard, lips pursed tight, nodding.

With a blast of cold air from outside, he's gone.

Cristiano stays to watch him enter, leaning his head back against his seat.

He leaves only when his engine starts to cool, when his head starts to ache, when his heart does.

*


	12. Chapter 12

**

James avoids him.

A week like an ice age of evaded glances, James leaving rooms as soon as he enters, remote as planets on the field.

He'd wanted this, thought it would be easier and it isn't.

The guilt settling on him like a virus.

He finds himself awkward, trying to put an arm around him when he's already walking away from group huddles after goals. Trying to catch his eye in the locker room before games, after training. To the point that Marcelo turns to look at him as James gets up to leave when he takes a seat next to them one morning, making excuses about needing to make phonecalls suddenly, phonecalls to a country still in bed half way round the world, lunch uneaten behind him.

Marcelo knowing well enough that if James was upset with Cristiano, then he'd done something to deserve it.

And he'd wanted to tell him, that he'd never meant for any of this to happen.

The thing was, James wasn't even his type.

He was practically a baby, and skittish with it too. All bright eyed and eager smiles, a people pleaser. An over eager kid wanting to talk about everything, tell you how great you were all the time, over the smallest of things. To begin with, that had been like a weight in a way, a burden. Cristiano hadn't known how to deal with it, head on. He didn't want to have to be the one to ruin his perceptions about him, about Real, about the world. It was almost like a responsibility to be around him, to not disappoint him.

Because in truth, he didn't understand it. How a good looking, talented, multi million dollar footballer could still seem so innocent at the age of 23, so naive. He didn't know if he ever remembers being as young as James could seem.

But that was the thing, in a world of egos and spoiled divas, James stood out. It was hard not to have him tug on his heart strings. Someone so sincere, so without bad intent. He could see the others feeling the same way, softening their tone around him. He'd even caught Pepe treating him like some kind of small baby animal, and by the second week of training, Marcelo had practically filed adoption papers to be his older brother.

He would find himself doing it too. Being more patient around him, attentive. Finding himself standing next to him during training, before and after games. Knowing that his presence alone would be enough to keep negativity away.

It was instinctive, and he could tell that James was grateful. Anytime Cristiano gave him even the slightest amounts of attention, James would preen under it. He'd learned soon enough that if he gave James a compliment, no matter how slight, it would make him blush and skitter, unable to make eye contact. As though nobody had ever been so kind to him in his life.

He'd discovered too, that he liked to be the one to get him to react like that.

He'd wondered how James would cope with all the pressure playing for Real, something that had broken plenty of players before him. In training after their back to back losses, James had been quiet, withdrawn. Normally so eager to make conversation, share a joke, instead he'd avoided eye contact with everyone, shrunk back from their group. Marcelo had tried joking with him, teasing him about a poor touch in training, and James had taken it personally, had apologized to him, promised to pay better attention next time. Marcelo having to ruffle his hair, pull him into a quick hug, apologize back to him.

He knew he'd been wrong about him that first game back against Deportivo. He'd seen a ball curve in from beyond the 25 yard mark and had to turn to double check that James had been the one to score it. After scoring a goal like that for Real most players would've thrown a celebration like they'd won the lottery, but James had only offered a sheepish "Vamos!" as they'd run to congratulate him.

He'd underestimated him. James was sweet but he was nobody's fool.

Cristiano was aware James idolized him, like a star struck kid, and it had made him feel a bit wary. Marcelo had teased him that first week, telling him to watch out for the kid with the crush. He'd laughed, but it was struck inside his head like a bell that couldn't be unrung.

It wasn't as though the fact he was good looking had escaped him.

After the game, Cristiano had congratulated him on his goal in the dressing room, both of them damp from a shower, shirtless. James speckling deeply with a blush that reached all the way down to his chest, eyes glowing. Shrugging, his voice stumbling over a "so was your hat trick," and Cristiano had found himself wondering if James was actually as innocent as he seemed.

Found himself wondering if dancing was the only thing James was good at using his hips for. How much further down his body that blush went. Started to wonder, really, how James would look after a good fuck. Wondered if he'd ever been fucked properly at all.

Then he'd become greedy with his mouth on his, wanting everything. Wanting to see James wrecked under him in the worst kind of way, eyes desperate, wild. Wanting things James hadn't asked for, things he hadn't offered.

With gym over for the day, Cristiano had waited outside for him to leave, determined to catch him. Tired of playing this game of cat and mouse, hide and seek. Tired of feeling like a predator.

Walking in to see the room empty and Cristiano wonders if maybe James had managed to devise an elaborate escape route to avoid him, at this point nothing in his attempt to avoid him would surprise him.

Till the sound of the door shuts behind him and a head jerks in his direction.

James in a vest drenched in sweat near the weights, taking a swig from a water bottle. His eyes widening for a second on seeing him there, before looking back down, focusing on his water. Cristiano feels like it's maybe the first time James has actually looked at him at all that entire week. And that bothers him. Being ignored by James has really bothered him.

"I wanted to talk," Cristiano offers, voice soft.

James's lips tighten then, as though talking is the last thing he wants to do. But he hesitates, doesn't just walk away.

Like approaching a timid animal, Cristiano moves towards him.

"Are we okay?" he whispers when he reaches him. James keeps his head bowed, eyes lowered. Cristiano takes a breath, "You know -- about the other night?"

Cristiano waits for him to look back at him, to say something. Silence. He wants this to be about James. Feels as though he's spent too long making decisions for the both of them. James remains still, but Cristiano can see how his breathing has shifted, tensed, like in fight or flight.

So he brings a finger up under James's chin, tries to make him raise his eyes to meet his. He responds by closing them, almost as though he's bracing himself to be hit in some way; for something to hurt him.

"We don't have to do anything you don't want to do," Cristiano's voice soft as a breath. "Just because you think I want it."

"I wanted it," James says suddenly, assertively. But his eyes flicker at the revelation of himself. Still unable to look at Cristiano's. Lips pursing, struggling to find the words. A breath, "I guess I s-shouldn't have --" another deep breath, this time in frustration, his stutter betraying him. Head going down further, embarrassed by it, by himself.

But he stays there, doesn't back away from him.

Cristiano's finger continues to stroke underneath his chin. "Never be embarrassed for wanting something," he pauses, "needing something."

James's eyes stay down, limp like this. Always so vulnerable, so easy to read. So willing to let himself be read. Almost holding his breath as they stand there together like that. As though waiting for something like a kiss, but dreading it too.

So Cristiano leans in and presses his mouth to his cheek for a second, holds it there. Whispers, "I'll be in tonight if you need me, okay?"

James left standing alone, head bowed, staring at his hands.  
  
His cheek the only part of his body that doesn't feel like ice.

**


	13. Chapter 13

He almost doesn't expect Cristiano to be there.

Almost midnight and he hesitates on the balcony that connects their rooms together at Valdebebas. The sky a warm deep black above him, the view of Madrid lit up like christmas lights in fall beyond him.

He hesitates.

The door leading to his room is open. Music softly playing inside.

When he steps into the doorway, Cristiano's the first thing he sees.

On the phone with his back to him, in a bath robe. The night only feeling real on seeing him there, in the way he moves his cell from one ear to the other, in the shape of his back in his robe, in the sound of his low assertive voice. He could watch the way Cristiano moved all day.

Hearing something, Cristiano turns, his eyebrows raising when he sees James standing there and for a second he thinks he's done something wrong, intruded. That Cristiano never expected him to show, had made other plans.

But he smiles, opening his mouth to say something but getting caught by the other person on the line talking back to him, gestures at him to come inside.

James takes in the room cautiously as he moves to perch on the edge of his bed. James had changed clothes twice before leaving his room. Settling on an outfit he'd wear out to a club or bar. Knowing he'd look dressy. Knowing that under Cristiano's gaze he'd be naked enough already, that confession in just being there, in not backing down.

Cristiano walks past him to the balcony door, closing it and pulling the blinds back, dimming the lights.

He's discussing an advertising shoot on the phone, something involving underwear and models.

On the way back he hovers in front of him, hands reaching for James's hair, idly threading his fingers through as he continues talking. Mouths a, "You okay?" to him.

James's skin is already flushed, his eyes serious. He nods, si, si, si.

Cristiano grins then, hand drifting to cup his chin absently, fingers grazing his mouth, "You need a drink?"

Nodding again, turning to press a mouth to his finger, a kiss. Cristiano stares at those lips on his skin for a second before turning and walking back to open up his fridge, phone cocked to the other ear, reaching inside, a bottle of champagne, pouring two glasses, handing one over to him, clinking them together first, like a strange celebration. James's palms are so sweaty he has to wipe them down on the bedding before he can take a sip.

After a minute, Cristiano gets off the phone with a long exhale, before going over to his sound system and scanning through his stereo for music for a second, then a minute. Everything looking wrong suddenly. He turns to James, "What was the name of that guy you like?"

He stares at him for a second confused before looking down, surprised he remembers.

Cristiano finds it, Adalberto Santiago's La Noche Más Linda Del Mundo. Something slow, yearning, with a bass. Something he'd heard James play in his car after games.

Then he sighs and perches on the edge of a cabinet opposite him, long legs stretched out in front till they almost reach James's.

He looks at him, then at his kitchen, then at his watch. A hand through his hair. 

"You need anything to eat?"

James smiles, a head shake.

"... another drink?"

James is looking down at his hands on the bed spread, "I don't want to be drunk."

Cristiano's eyebrows raise at this and he looks away, shy almost. He gets up again, goes to check the door to the balcony, make sure it's locked. As though he doesn't trust the way he'd locked it the first time, not trusting that anyone else won't catch them in some way, that this moment won't be private enough.

When he turns, James is there, standing behind him.

Cristiano looks at him, waiting, but James doesn't move, doesn't look at him.

Quietly, "If you're here for something, you'll have to ask."

And James is smiling a little, because this is something he can have, can ask for at all. His hands reaching for Cristiano, for his waist. He stands there and lets him, without moving.

"Tell me what you want," Cristiano says, voice soft as a touch. What he wants is for this to be about James.

James lowers his head, as if offering himself, a sacrifice. Nothing remaining between them except heat, expectation.

Silence. Cristiano waiting too. "Tell me," he says.

James exhales, eyelids fluttering, licking his lips, pulling him in by the waist. "You."

Cristiano only has to lean forwards a few inches to press his mouth against his.

James sucks in a deep breath with it, as though he'd been holding it in the entire time, been holding it that entire week.

At that Cristiano leans back a little to see if he'll say something else, something more, but James pulls him in again, needing the kiss to fill his silences.

There are times he feels as though James could be kissed for hours, days, weeks, could ask for nothing more than a kiss. The way his body relaxes with it. Shoulders sagging, the grip on his waist loosening. So he gives him that, for minutes, wet heady kisses, till it feels like he's being held up by nothing other than his mouth on his. His body slack, needing. Entirely his like this, a man surrendered.

Cristiano takes the lead, moving him to his bed, pushing him down as they kiss, straddling him. Letting James lean up to keep the kiss going, as though trying to keep his head above water. His hands searching for skin under Cristiano's clothes, for that proof of him. Cristiano undoing the buttons on his shirt, letting James's hands slide up over the muscles on his chest, his back, letting James need him like this.

He slips his hand between them, over James's crotch, squeezing and rubbing. James shuts his eyes, head back, breath shakey. Lets Cristiano unzip his jeans, slip his hand inside, pull him out.

"Is this what you want?" he whispers against his mouth as he begins to stroke him.

James nodding, eyes closed, Si, si, si.

Cristiano takes his time with kissing him. Until the kisses begin to feel like something else, something meaningful. The kind of smothering kisses that blitzed out all thought processes into nothing but chasing the kiss. Urgent and raw and needy, the way everything about James was. Until he's soft and boneless beneath him. Cristiano's hands and mouth moving in a rhythm against him. Letting himself be kissed and touched by Cristiano, letting Cristiano do anything to him.

If this is a conversation about what James had wanted, then he's said it all. James's kisses always so confessional. A priest on his knees, a nun with rosaries between her lips.

He undresses James slowly, reverently, like in a ceremony, until even his eyes are naked.

Spreading his legs apart with his own before leaning back down to kiss him again. "Relax, okay?"

James's eyes are wide. He grins at how obvious he is. Shuts them, swallowing air. "Been thinking about this all day... all week..."

Cristiano looks at him for a moment. The way the warm low light angles on his skin, the look in his eyes, his mouth, taking him in like this. Memorizing him. "Relax," he whispers again, kissing him. Little tiny teasing kisses now, lips grazing, loving the way that James wants this so much, the electric touch of their cocks brushing together. He wants it too, has been thinking about this for a lot longer than a week.

He leans back and starts to press kisses into the insides of James's thighs, starting at his knees, moving upwards. As he does, he keeps his eyes on James's face, watching the beginnings of his response. His eyes hazy, his breathing shallow, making little whiney sighs whenever Cristiano sucks in another kiss to his skin. Pressing kisses into his stomach, his tongue trailing down across his belly button. The muscles of his abs rippling in response as Cristiano finally reaches the top of his flushed cockhead. He starts tonguing it gently, playfully, open wet mouthed kisses. Lets it drip with saliva. James watching him, hands in Cristiano's hair, mouth opening and closing, shivering around his touch.

Cristiano can feel the way James's breath holds as he slides his fingers inbetween the curve of his ass. Tracing around his hole, inhaling shakily as Cristiano slowly presses inside with one.

He flinches. It doesn't hurt, but doesn't feel good, just jarring. He tries to go with it, to not resist, to relax. Then Cristiano curls his finger hard inside him, and James jerks forward with a pant. Realizes with a hiss that this must be his prostate. It's a good burn, a jet of warmth flowing all the way through him. Letting out a low moan, pressing back into it reflexively. Body unwinding, tension ebbing.

Cristiano laughs softly at his reaction. "Feels good, hmm?"

James is nodding and nodding, hands on his hair, needing more.

Cristiano's smiling up at him, eyes dark, tender. With James's eyes still on him, he goes back to flicking his tongue over his cock. Licking long lines up and down his shaft as James watches, sucking on the tip as he thrusts his finger inside again and again, adding another, and then another, in ways that makes James's hips buck, his fingers in his hair curl, his voice hiss.

When he finally slides his mouth over him fully, sucks him all the way in, James's mind goes black, white, starry. His universe beginning where Cristiano's mouth is, ending where his fingers are. He tries to thrust up into Cristiano's throat, starting to lose control, chasing more touch, more Cristiano, chasing that deep burn flaring up through his stomach. He doesn't realize he's begging for it, that he's begging for Cristiano to fuck him, to please please fuck him, until Cristiano leans back, fingers and mouth abandoning him.

Disorientated with the lack of touch, ice cold without it.

Cristiano leans over him, covering his body with his own, pressing a kiss to the corners of his mouth.

"You okay?" looking at James carefully.

"Si, si, si," he nods; eyes unfocused, skin flushed, breathing messy. Nothing but exposed need, all those veins of him.

"You want me to fuck you?" whispered into his neck, "Need me inside you so bad, hmm? " Words raw, like lit matches, and James burns with them, nodding his head furiously, si, si, si.

Like this, Cristiano pulls away and reaches for the nightstand. A bottle of lube, his own. He squirts some into his hands before rubbing them together and then over and over his erection. James watches, eyes wide and transfixed. As though watching him prepare a tattoo gun, like everything in his life is about to change and he's about to be scarred forever by this, in a way he won't know is good or bad until later.

But Cristiano's expression is soft and gentle, and he crawls back into bed with him, leans in to kiss him again.

"Just relax," they both say at the same time now, and Cristiano looks up quickly. James is smirking and they're both laughing.

Grinning at each other, the tension broken, James angles up to get another kiss from him. His hands coming up to pull him down to deepen it, craving his intimacy. It means something, he needs this to mean something.

Gently, Cristiano starts to press into him.

James's breathing hitches again, and he can feel Cristiano holding his own. It's hard, he's so tight, and he doesn't know if this is going to work. But as he pushes in James arches up into him, wanting everything. Wanting it to go from this to something good, knows if anyone can do that, it'd be Cristiano.

He doesn't take another breath until Cristiano's all the way in, everything about him tensing, something like a hot searing burn inside him. James's fingers pressing into his back stiffly. Clinging to him, keeping him close in a way that Cristiano knows will bruise. He doesn't try and release them. If this is what James needs, it's what he needs. Everything already too much and not enough. Inhaling again as Cristiano tries to ease back out. Eyes squeezed shut tight, like he's over thinking everything, trying to get through it.

Cristiano pushes all the way back into him again, making James hiss, and he holds it like that for a moment, lets himself breathe into James. He lifts James's hips up higher to angle himself onto his prostate, and when he does James's grip tightens even further. His body curling up into him reflexively, and he lets out a shivery shakey whimper that Cristiano can feel flickering everywhere through his own body. A burn turning into a deep heat that almost liquefies him.

He grinds into that spot for a minute, until James is limp in his arms, whining and stirring, like he's in pain with it, and Cristiano shuts his eyes because it's almost too much for him already.

At first, every time he eases out and presses back into him, James moans and jerks and goes limp under him again, and Cristiano almost thinks he's come. He lets him ride it out. Slowly, slowly he starts thrusting into him at a lazy rhythm, letting James's hips dictate the pace. Letting James want it, his body ask for it, beg for it.

His other hand reaching between them for James's erection, squeezing him into his fist as he does, and James is gone. Moaning and sighing and arching his back desperately into his, body seeking all of it. His fingers clenching tightly into Cristiano's skin, like he's terrified he could stop, leave.

Fucking into him until he has James's neck arched all the way back, his eyes rolled back, one hand keeping Cristiano's hips pressed onto his, the other trying to pull Cristiano's head closer to his. Needing Cristiano to stay as close as possible. His breathing coming out in stutters, moans, whines. Cristiano cursing in Portuguese, telling him how good this feels, how hot this is, if he could only see the way he looked like this, fodase. His free hand working him in time with his thrusts, listening to the way James's breath is wrecked, how he's shaking and moaning beneath him like this. Until James cries out, fingers loosening, spilling out onto Cristiano's hand, collapsing back onto the bed, body clenching tight around him. Cristiano needing only a few quick thrusts to follow behind.

Spent, breathless, barely conscious of anything, James can feel a towel wiping him down. He leans into the touch, skin raw, burnt out. Cristiano crawls into bed besides him, pulls him into him from behind. His chest flush with James's back, leg sliding between his, a blanket coming up over them. Everything a warm haze, a dream. He kisses the back of his neck and James shivers like his mouth's too hot.

He pulls Cristiano's arm up over him so that he can thread their fingers together. Shakey, disorientated, needing to keep Cristiano close, close, close.

"You like that," Cristiano is whispering.

James is sighing, "Mmmm," deeply in response. Cristiano laughs, kisses his neck again.

Falling asleep like that, his mouth pressed into James's neck, hand in his.

*


	14. Chapter 14

 

It's a Saturday afternoon and Cristiano's driving James home from training before picking Junior up from a friend's place.

Cristiano's letting the radio play out, singing out of tune to hit Spanish pop songs, making James laugh. Their fingers and gazes brushing together during stops.

And every time Cristiano looks over at him with those large dark eyes, he feels his breath catch.

Everything in his life pausing, getting out of focus.

Before the lights turn green, before the radio switches to commercials, before Cristiano grins, looks back at the road ahead.

James wonders if this is how girls feel, if this is what that's like. He wonders if this is just a crush. He wonders if this is the greatest love of his life.

In between sessions that morning they'd listened to Ancelotti giving orders, Cristiano with an arm slung around James, possessive. James having to listen harder to hear Ancelotti over the way Cristiano's fingers had grazed circles into his skin. His skin feeling too raw already, like it had been stripped bare the night before.

Then Cristiano had leaned in and hovered with his breath by his ear for a second before saying, "You feeling okay?"

James had lowered his eyes turning his head to lean into him a little more, the crook of his neck like a universe for only them, "It's like I've been feeling you all day."  
  
It had been Cristiano's turn to lower his head, trying to conceal a smile, shy suddenly, squeezing his shoulder in turn, ruffling his hair, bashful almost.

Grinning and giggling at each other in that secret shared joke of them for a second.

The way it could be them and nothing else. Them against the world, them against each other.

Cristiano was so immediate, urgent. James feels like his life has been in the slow lane, a foot in and out, only ever half awake. Cristiano was a gaze that never backed down, hands that were answers and never questions, smiles that confessed every secret.

He didn't know who he was anymore, who he'd ever been. Cristiano would kiss him and he didn't know who he would be in the five minutes after. Only the core of him surviving, the blood in his veins, the air in his lungs, the racing of his heart.

Only them and nothing more.

Skin stripped bare, everything feeling brand new, undiscovered, that raw skin of him hypersensitive. Like nothing in his life had been real to him until that morning, that night.

The wind's in Cristiano's hair and he turns to smile at James and there’s this moment, with his eyes on him, where nothing else has existed. The Sistine chapel has never been painted, no songs have ever been written, only this moment has ever been real.

Then the radio switches over to a slower song and Cristiano hits him on the arm to get his attention. He holds an imaginary microphone up to James's mouth for him to sing into. Like this is their song, like this is their thing. They finish the song together, singing to each other on the way to James's place. Giggling and grinning, like this is something they've always done, how they've always been.

The sun's out, the skies are blue, he's playing for Real Madrid, and this might be the greatest love of his life.

***

It was a secret like a living thing. With a pulse, a heartbeat, a secret that breathes. Wherever they go, it follows. Even when they aren't looking or talking to each other, it was there, breathing down the backs of their necks, whispering into their ears. A third passenger. A person on a phone next to them. Something so loud and alive and visible that James feels like everyone must be able to see it. Overhear it just from the way they look at each other, and often, the way they can't look at each other, guilty. Cristiano had kicked open a door inside of him, let in too much light, and now he's worried everyone else can see it in him too. That he's transparent, that the blood in his veins will be caught calling his name.

But it was like wanting something dangerous, like sticking your hands through burning flames, wanting to stand in them, bathe in them, sleep in them. James craved the ashes like he'd never craved anything else before.

At training a few mornings later it's James who makes the first move, approaching Cristiano before a game, voice low, teasing, "You feeling okay?"

Cristiano had raised his eyebrows and grinned at him then, that question from the other morning, repeating his. He'd checked to make sure nobody else was near them before looking back, "You gonna come over tonight?"

James staring at Cristiano's eyes; his mouth. His whispered voice dreamy, cocky. "Why, are you gonna fuck me?"

Cristiano grinning then, almost laughing, looking down, vulnerable really, before back at him with that smirk, "Yeah." But his skin is slightly pink and James likes this, that he knows how to embarrass him too.

Still staring at his mouth, mind halfway there, lungs full of smoke already, "Okay."

Cristiano overly talkative on the drive over. James silent, distracting. It was hard to deal with James staring at him the way he did sometimes, his bright dreamy eyes on him, how hard he could see he already was in his jeans.

The second time is faster and slower than the first. Kissing as they enter his bedroom. James's mouth desperate and endless on his, Cristiano's lips hungry at his neck. James tripping up as he takes off his jeans, both of them laughing at him, before he pulls Cristiano down into bed with him. Laying in bed together for only a minute before James is arching his hips up, guiding Cristiano's hand down, smirking at how shameless he feels, asking without words. Kissing Cristiano as the flames lapped up his feet.

Cristiano's even slower this time, teasing. Fucking into him for minutes and minutes at a languid pace, grinding into his prostate. James's cock left untouched, until he starts sighing with frustration, jutting his hips up, trying to fuck back into him, but Cristiano only leans a little higher away, only slows down even more. Prompting exasperation, James taking himself to hand, stroking himself quickly despite Cristiano's pace, shutting his eyes and letting the sensation of Cristiano filling him be enough.

Cristiano watching him unravel beneath him like that, mesmerized, as he spilled out into his hand. Eyes shut, neck arched, shivering his name.

He ushers James out early on weekday mornings, not wanting Junior to catch him there, almost getting caught that first time. James feeling like a runaway teenager, lovesick. Every touch illicit, every kiss brand new.

Sheets thick with ashes behind them.

He only gets to see him a few times a week and he learns to live his life like some type of emergency first responder, always on standby. There are nights before games when he's on edge and he craves him, skin restless and itchy, like with a fever.

The days in between like a caffeine hangover. Time dripping by slowly. Trying to focus on other things, on making friends in Madrid, spending time with friends who've flown in from back home. Catching up on TV, movies, books, Spanish telenovelas. Trying not to let himself think too much. Homesick suddenly for Cucuta, Ibague, Medellin, Porto, Monaco. For every place he's lived, for all the people he's ever been, for some stability.

Because all of this scares him when it does, everything about being in Madrid overwhelms him. These are the nights he makes sure he's free at home, turns down plans, lays in bed checking his phone, disappointment tightening in his gut.

When it gets to nightfall and he hasn't heard anything, he convinces himself that Cristiano's over him. That's he's sleeping with someone else. He imagines who. Tells himself that this whole thing had never been real, had just been a way to pass the time, that nothing they've done together has ever meant anything to him. Hurts himself before Cristiano can.

Waking up with his phone still in his hand.

In training when Cristiano looks or speaks to him with that same shared secret smile in his voice and eyes, James's panic abates, his stomach settling. His crush back to crushing him, the scent of something burning lingering in any glance, any look between them that holds for just a second too long.

Then at night Cristiano will send him a message, "Where are you? x" as though they'd made plans together. James responding by actually telling him where he is, as though it was a conversation starter, and not rhetorical.

No matter if he's out with friends, family members who've flown in all the way from Colombia, if he's in another city an hour away, Cristiano will respond with, "How long till I get to see you? x" in a way that makes James feel like they haven't seen each other in weeks, won't get to see each other for months. As though James has stood Cristiano up from a long standing date, let him down.

Almost always, he finds a way to sneak back in time. Arriving at Cristiano's door by nightfall, voices hushing as he leads him up to his bedroom. Kissing him as James tries to ask how he is, mouths thirsting for contact, like two people starved of touch. His bedroom could be on fire, the apocalypse could be on its way, and James wouldn't notice, wouldn't be able to feel it over the heat of Cristiano's hands on his skin.

It was like having to learn a new language. His mouth forgetting all other words but Cristiano's mouth on his, discovering them around his tongue, around his fingers. This fire between them being the only speech he understood.

Listening to the bass of reggaeton in bed together. Cristiano's hands charting James's dipped spine, lifted hips, parted thighs. Music with a pulse, hips in a rhythm. The language of chaos, longing, hunger, desire.

James liked to wrap his legs around Cristiano's waist in bed, feeling the way Cristiano's muscles work. Cristiano's body never feeling as strong as it is when James is letting him use it to pin him down.

Cristiano keeping his eyes open, watching as James unravels, his shudders running through him.

How James didn't have words for the way gravity pulled inside his chest in the way Cristiano looked at him right then, that feeling of something inside of him falling and falling.

Post-coital and dazed, James laying in the crook of his arm checking his phone after, Cristiano idly staring up as he does, cracking light jokes about the photos on his feed, a relative sharing photos of James with family from when they'd last visited.

"You don't look like your father," Cristiano's saying.

"That's my stepdad." James clicks the like button and puts the phone down beside him, turning back to Cris, his hand onto his waist, bodies never losing contact. He'd never been in bed with anyone who felt as real as he did, as solid, the way his body was like a fortress.

"Your dad played too, right?"

James is frowning and looking at him, "How did you know that?"

Cristiano was grinning, "You don't think I know anything about you?"

James with a coy smile, shrugging.

"Are you still close to your biological father then or..."

James's eyes flickering down. "He left when I was 3. My mother..." A breath, considering, "She says it's when I got my stutter."

Looking at that hand on Cristiano's chest, swallowing.

Cristiano looking at him for a second, his eyes shiny, the way it's like he's not all there anymore, has drifted off, that silence in him speaking too loud. Everything visible in his eyes, his mouth.

He lightly grazes his finger under his chin, "I bet girls find it cute."

Another flickering of emotion over James's face then; the instant frown, the fake tight smile to cover it up, the way he squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head vehemently.

"I think it's cute," Cristiano says pointedly then, determinedly, finger tilting his chin back up to him.

James is still shaking his head, eyes kept shut, frowning, disagreeing.

Cristiano knowing he's hit a vein, having to deal with that gush of blood. Guilty, should've thought about it before he'd asked about it, pulls him to him, kissing the top of his head like an apology.

Silence, James's arm coming up around him, curling himself into his chest.

Cristiano's voice a whisper, "You know, I get it. I was bullied too."

"You?" a concerned mumble from his chest.

"You haven't seen my school photos?" laughing, "Bad skin, bad teeth, bad hair. Girls wouldn't go out with me." James was leaning back to look at him a little, eyebrows raising slightly at that, a question in them that Cristiano quickly follows up with, "I thought I needed a girl to fit in."

James distracted by this suddenly, wondering when he knew he didn't like girls, what that was like for him.

Cristiano still looking at him. "I was a huge nerd. But it stays with you, you know?"

James quiet, lost in thought. This was the most personal conversation they'd ever had.

"But look at us now, huh?" Cristiano's finger back under his chin, "You’re playing in the best team in the world…" a cheeky grin offered, "With the best player in the world."

James smiling in response but his eyes are still glazed, distant. That fragility to him, that part of him so close to being hurt, so open to it.

Cristiano sighs, shifting so that he's back on top of James, hands either side of his head, demanding his full attention.

"You're in bed with me," smirking, playing it up, wanting to make James laugh.

James grinning, arms up around his neck. "Your ego's never been small, huh..."

"My ego what?" and he brushes his hardening cock back against James's thigh.

"Is that what you call it?" and they're both laughing again, kissing, giggling, back under water, pulled under like a tsunami.

That surrender of him, like surrendering to breathing, to gravity. Telling each other things, secrets without words, mouths to skin, palms to palms, "Our bodies are so honest together," Cristiano whispering, kissing the back of his neck.

His body fluent in this new language, this new rhetoric of kiss and touch, of confessing everything all the time. Never inarticulate, never betrayed by a stutter, a lack of words, and in the morning James's thighs are bruised in all the places Cristiano's honest mouth had touched.

These were the nights James would feel most like he was something like a boyfriend, mouths and hands and hips entangling, pulses colliding. Two people who'd needed to see the other so bad they'd caught last minute red eye flights for it, stayed up sleepless in wait. When they were like two people who'd forgotten how to sleep without the other.

***


	15. Chapter 15

*

Two weeks with the Colombian National team, away from Spain and each other. Knowing they won't be in each others pockets for the first time in so long and it's like surfacing from a dive, makes whatever's happening almost finally seem real to him.

James had tried to jokingly say, "I'll miss you," the night before. Tried to make light about the things he really meant.

Cristiano had cocked a smile as he'd pushed him down on the bed beneath him, mouth pressing into his neck. "I'll give you something to miss."

In the bathroom of the plane over the Atlantic he pulls down the collar of his shirt, runs his fingers over and over the bruised kisses Cristiano had left him. Looking like he'd been sleeping with a wild animal, all blood lust and hunger, a love that had teeth, trying to tame it.

He finds himself tracing them through his shirt as the stewardess tries to flirt with him. That's what it feels like, as if Cristiano has peeled off layers of his skin with his mouth, leaving everything about him exposed. Nothing feeling real to him except those marks. 

Walking through the airport and seeing his teammates for the first time since the World Cup, falling into happy embraces, loud laughter. Standing outside his hotel balcony at night with the skyline of New York lit up like the backdrop to a hundred movie scenes in front of him.

And it's like everything is new to him, raw. How different everything about him is since the Cup. Crowds of people chanting his name at the airport, at the hotel. People he hasn't spoken to in years leaving message after message on his machine, like his father. Messages he doesn't know how to respond to, how to delete. Reporters wanting to talk to him before and after every game, wanting to find out things about him that he'd never even asked himself.

And everyone asks about him, about Ronaldo. His team mates, journalists, strangers on the street. What it's like to play with him, what he's really like.

He doesn't tell people about how after the Champions league game against Basel, Cristiano had given him a look as they'd left the field, his eyes roaming all over his body and then back to his eyes again, sweat over his brow, eyes deep and blazing against the night sky, that had made James's breath catch and time stand still. How it had been a challenge, a dare, a threat. How they'd made love in a shower room stall at the back of the locker room, bodies slick with sweat from the game, smelling raw and earthy, Cristiano biting into his back to keep from making any noise.

He smiles and tells them that Cristiano's really friendly, a great guy, nothing like the media says he is, as his fingers run up and down his collar bone.

He doesn't tell them how Cristiano had touched his back the night before he'd left for New York with palms so urgent he could still feel the burn through his skin. How the scent of his aftershave on his clothes all these days later is enough to jolt his insides like electricity.

He tells them that he's a great person, a great team mate, that he makes him feel like they've known each other forever, the tips of his fingers warm. He has to stop himself from smiling too much.

At night Cristiano calls him. Makes conversation about training and upcoming games, makes James laugh with his impersonations of Ancelotti's thick Italian accent.

Breathing into the silence together in bed with the timezones stretching out between them.

"My team mates think I have a new girlfriend," James says, voice unable to hide his smile.

Cristiano's quiet, confused, as though James could actually have a new girlfriend. "Why would they think that?"

"You kind of left a mark..." laughing, blushing over the phoneline. Fingers on his neck.

"At least they know," Cristiano whispers.

"At least they know?"

That low heat of a voice, "That you're getting fucked right."

James is giggling, giddy on this, on them.

His skin had been ripped open, everything underneath seared in his name and completely alive.

*


	16. Chapter 16

**  
  
Back to Madrid, back to the team. A home away from home.  
  
A game out of town to Granada, a late night coach trip away. Boarding as the sun falls behind them, half of the team already asleep, headphones over their ears, hoodies pulled up.  
  
Cristiano is sat alone by a window at the back and glances up when James walks in, smiling when he sees him in a way that makes James feel lit up inside, that door inside of him kicked wide open, before he looks away as others amble around him for seats. But it's enough to make James feel brave enough to take the seat next to him.  
  
He's wearing an oversized beanie, a tight white t-shirt, worn-down gray jeans, looking half his age, like a teenage boy and not a footballing megastar. Tired and sleepy and soft, caught off-guard by the sudden onset of adulthood.  
  
James wants to pull him close, press his head into his neck and tell him he's missed him like crazy, that his skin has been itchy and restless without him, but they're technically in public. He settles in nudging him a little with his elbow when he sits down, grinning up at him before looking away. Cristiano only responding by gently pressing his knee back against his.  
  
They don't talk on the ride in. The coach full of hushed conversations, tinny headphone music, snoring. James too shy suddenly to try and come up with casual conversation, the way it feels like everyone else can hear them, how everything he wants to say feels too intimate, loud. James's hand speaking for him by brushing against his at a stop, like reaching to hold his but not. Cristiano responding by resting his hand on his thigh for the rest of the ride in, fingers tracing along the inside during red lights before stopping. James holding his breath, hoping for more, for less.  
  
He knows they're going to share a room together, spend the night together, when Cristiano slings his arm around his shoulder when they all get up to leave. Starts making conversation with him as they walk into the hotel with Keylor, Pepe, too loud suddenly, like he's trying to cover for something. Teasing James as they wait in the lobby, joking that he's got a crush on one of the hotel receptionists as she gets them his key, enough for her to hear. The others laughing and James blushing in a way that makes Cristiano stare, as if it's confessional. That arm never leaving his shoulder.  
  
Reaching his room and stepping inside, tossing their bags next to their beds, shrugging their jackets off, and before James knows what's happening, Cristiano has thrown him up against a wall and is kissing him, hard.  
  
James gasping, but as hungry for the contact as he is, teeth clashing. Arms around waists, around shoulders, digging into each others hair. Flicking his tongue back into Cristiano's mouth as he pulls back which makes Cristiano press into him again, makes James do that to him over and over, desiring his desire. A hungry naked urgent kiss. Cristiano moaning around it and James is hard already, wanting to know if the night is going to be like this kiss, hot and wet and demanding.  
  
"You miss me?" Cristiano breathes when he pulls back. James can see him smirking like he knows the answer already, wants to hear him say it.  
  
James only groans, lets Cristiano kiss him again.  
  
"Tell me what you missed," Cristiano's not giving up. He starts to press kisses into his neck, looking to mark his skin again with need, claim him back for himself.  
  
James wants to tell him, "Everything," but instead says, "This."  
  
"You missed that, huh?" another flick of his tongue along his neck. "What about this?" Cristiano's hand moves to cup the bulge of his crotch. James's eyes flicker and he flinches into the touch, nodding furiously. "Tell me," Cristiano says.  
  
James licks his lips, keeps his eyes fixed on Cristiano's. "I missed that," he manages to say.  
  
Cristiano keeps him pressed against the wall, hand sneaking inside his zipper to find him, mouth pressed to his skin. James drops his head back against the wall, letting him repaint the fading bruises on his neck with his lips and teeth and tongue, gasping with every lick and bite.  
  
Laughing softly at the moans that escape his lips, whimpering as he skims down to lick lazy circles along his collar. This time not so much a tease as a promise because his hands are pushing his jeans down off his hips and he's sliding down onto his knees in front of him. That thick bulge of him straining through his underpants.  
  
Keeping his eyes on him, Cristiano starts licking and sucking at him through the material, James jerking at the sudden warmth of his tongue, his hands reaching for his shoulders. Trying to keep him still, hold him in place. Needing him right there, even when Cristiano scrapes his teeth along his skin through his pants. Doesn't want him to stop.  
  
"Tell me what you want," Cristiano insists before sucking in hard kisses along the damp material like he wants to bruise him there too, claim it, reclaim everything about him.

James wants this. Cristiano on his knees in front of him, watching him, waiting for him.  
  
When James can only gasp for air, Cristiano smiles a slow, satisfied smile. "You want this?" flicking his tongue across him through the material, the hot wet heat that was there and then not. "Or this?" he whispers, with the barest hint of suction.  
  
"Any - anything," James manages, shivering as Cristiano's smile deepens.  
  
"Really?" he breaths. "Anything?" Now he slips his fingers inside the back of his underwear, pressing inside him, just slightly. "Like this? Only this?"  
  
"More," James moans. “Cristiano...”  
  
Laughing softly, leaning forwards, his breathing hot and damp through the thin underwear that was all that separated his mouth from his cock. He twists his fingers deeper inside him, curling them forward and fucking into him, sending shocks of pleasure rocketing through him. Adding a dirty little twist to each stroke and James has to bite his lip to keep from whimpering, to keep from missing anything Cristiano might say.

"Yeah, like that. Show me how much you missed me."  
  
He was losing it, and Cristiano knew. James could tell by the way he eased off, the way his mouth only skimmed his skin, the way his fingers stilled inside him.  
  
"Not yet," Cristiano's grinning. "Not until you show me how you want it." James staring at him helplessly. He flicks his wrist, jerking his cock out of his underpants finally, and stroking him, rough and hard and nasty. "This?"  
  
"Yes," James says.  
  
"Which one?" Cristiano asks as he strokes him, voice low and rough.  
  
He gasps, as Cristiano leans in to finally suck messy wet kisses over the too sensitive skin of his tip then back down across his length. “All of it.”  
  
He hums, a soft, pleased sound against James's skin, and slowly eases his fingers out of him, then back in, a little harder, a little faster every time. Watching him, seeing everything James can't hide. "I love watching you, you know that?” he says in a voice that's little more than a whisper but fills James's head.  
  
James fights to hold himself still, to not push himself onto his hand, but he can't, has to move, needs to feel Cristiano deeper and deeper inside him. "Yeah," Cristiano's whispering, voice huskier, "Yeah, like that, show me how much you like that." His other hand sliding up his cock in time with his mouth, up and down with the same rhythm as his fingers, and James is whining, his breath coming in tearing gasps, rocking himself back and down onto his hand. Each time he moves, Cristiano teases him a little more; every shift of his hips is rewarded with his tongue sweeping along the tip, tasting him. Until James is thrusting against him helplessly and Cristiano finally, finally takes him into his mouth.  
  
Sucking him all the way in and fucking him with his fingers at the same time, shattering James into a million tiny pieces. His whole body flushing with heat and pleasure, sagging against the wall, gravity pulling him in from the inside out.  
  
Cristiano stands up, putting his arms around him and pressing James's head into his chest, holding him to him. Half naked and trembly with shockwaves, cock hanging out of his underpants and pressed between them, still fully dressed against him. Standing there together like that for minutes, remembering to breathe.

James has missed everything about him, everything.

***  
  
Post coital in their hotel bed later, James zoning out. That come down off the sugar high of being with him again. His limbs vague and loose, his mind clear and light. Cristiano's checking his phone for messages, letting James use the crook of his free arm to rest his head.  
  
Looking up, he see's their reflection in the phone above them, Cristiano clicking a button.  
  
"We've just had sex!" he protests, laughing, his voice automatically hushing on the word sex as though someone could hear him, covering his face with his hand.  
  
"I'm not gonna send this to my mother," Cristiano's other arm was pulling James back towards him, watching him on the screen of his phone. "C'mon, we look cute together," his grin reflecting brightly back at them.  
  
James's head is turned away, covered by his hand when the photo appears onscreen.  
  
Cristiano rolls his eyes, tries to move James's arm down, but he's laughing, shaking his head. Cristiano maintains his grip, forces James back into the cove of his neck, where he burrows his head.  
  
Button pressed, they appear together again onscreen. James with his face pressed into Cristiano's neck, his arm around his chest.  
  
His eyes are closed in laughter, and so are Cristiano's, and that's the photo he keeps.

**


	17. Chapter 17

**

The night before the Clasico, James finds himself hovering outside Cristiano's balcony door at the Valdebabas.

He'd been anxious about the game for weeks. Alternating between feeling like a kid on a sugar high about it, asking the others endless questions other Clasico games they'd played in, goals they'd scored that he'd only ever seen on his TV screen before now. To feeling so nervous about it that he'd find himself sleepless, not wanting to talk to anyone, not wanting to hear anything about it. The game only hours away and James feels a mixture of both, seeking out the only distraction to him that could ever come close to a good game of football.

Inside Cristiano's room the lights are still on. He's dancing in his kitchenette alone topless in his jogging bottoms, reggaeton playing, in the middle of taking a swig of juice from his fridge, hips swaying.

He turns to see James there, and grins, shameless, cocky, continuing to dance to himself. Lets James watch.

James is laughing, his nerves abating just seeing him there, being around him. How he never seemed to care what people thought about him, how he enjoyed challenging their preconceived notions of him. He had that ease with himself that James had never learned and so much of who he was about was like a challenge, a dare.

Cristiano continues to sway, singing along to the music, his voice only marginally better than his dancing. Never embarrassed. The least embarrassable human James had ever known.

He grabs one of James's arms idly as he approaches, forcing him to half heartedly spin around, bumping their hips together. James grinning, rolling his eyes at him.

The music continues to play and he's pulling him up close.

"Must be hard being the worst dancer in the team," Cristiano's smirking at him, unashamed, all the confidence in the world.

James giving him a look, "I don't know, is it?"

Cristiano grinning, always enjoying having someone dish it back out, spins him around again, their hands together now like in a waltz.

James uses his other hand to press their bodies together, tries to sync Cristiano's hips with his, with the beat. He smiles, pleased, as his body follows along to his, looking up at him.

Cristiano's eyes dark, glinting. He spins him around again, slower this time, like a proper couple, and James puts his arms around Cristiano's neck, their hips flushed together, his body moving along to his, seeking his out.

"Maybe we could try this one as a goal celebration," James says, voice low.

The heat of their bodies together, their faces so close that if James leans in just an inch he could kiss him. That unspoken kiss heavy in Cristiano's eyes, his hips.

"Maybe if you score in the Clasico," Cristiano offers in a whisper, eyes focused on James's mouth. James's body focused on the warm shivery way Cristiano feels against him, on the way it isn't dancing anymore, it's foreplay.

"What if I score two goals."

"Then we fuck on the pitch, obviously," Cristiano grinning, dark eyes still on his mouth, on the way James dips his head back in laughter.

Dancing like this together to the music for minutes and minutes, slowly, dreamily. Forgetting about the game, about his nerves. Enjoying the almost, the not quite. The way he knows how the night will end, the way he hopes it never does.

**


	18. Chapter 18

**

Three goals against Barcelona and the roar of the crowd in his head and in his heart later and James is back to being the energizer bunny on red bull, drinking champagne and talking animatedly, congratulating them all. Sincerely in love with everyone and everything. It's endearing to watch, this beautiful eager kid so happy for everyone, but it's also distracting.

Cristiano's talking with Sergio and Iker, celebratory but soberly, like adults, war embittered survivor's of El Clasico's past, and he watches James in the corner attaching himself to Chicharito. Congratulating him on an amazing performance, even though he'd played maybe ten minutes of the game. Planting a kiss on his cheek, looking him right in the eyes, like it was a confession that demanded the utmost of sincerity. Apart from a few moments at the start of the party, James hadn't spoken to him at all and watching him declare his love for every other person in the room was starting to grate on him.

James walks past them to get more champagne and he grins at them as he does, that bright earnest smile, and Cristiano stops him suddenly with a hand to his waist, "Iker, you know James hasn't heard about the time Mourinho waited for that ref outside his car after that Clasico a few years back."

James's eyes widen and Iker and Sergio get right into it, arguing over the specifics - "No no, it was go take your cigar and have a laugh" -- "Didn't he tell him to go enjoy his new expensive Barca watch?" -- "Barca gives ref's watches?" that earnest voice -- "Only after they give us 7 yellows" -- "Didn't he poke a ref in the eyes once?" -- "That was Barca's assistant and he deserved it" -- Letting them talk, enjoying being a listener, laughing at all their jokes, because James thinks everyone is charming and wonderful, is always a kid with his face pressed up against the glass, happy to be involved at all.

Like that, James settles into him, Cristiano's arm draped across his shoulder, anchoring him there. And like this, Cristiano continues with the conversation between Sergio and Iker about other Clasico games, other war stories. James silently sipping champagne under his arm, like a kid now being among adults.

Cristiano no longer distracted. Feeling settled too like this, having James close to him, his sincerity and earnestness back to himself. As the conversation draws on, he leans into Cristiano more, sleepy, drunk on the champagne. Sighing and tucking his head into his chest, under his neck, his breathing slowing.

Cristiano lets him, like this is something they do all the time, like having James attached to him like this in the middle of a party after a Clasico win is something they've always done. Sergio and Iker keeping up the conversation, barely registering James is there; it's not like any of the other guys never gets this touchy feely after games or before games or during training or just whenever. Even though Cristiano knows that this is different, the others don't.

When Iker gets pulled away into another conversation, Sergio ambling along behind him to add some words in his defense, James leans back to look up at him.

"Aren't you gonna tell me how great I am too?" Cristiano says, smirking. The spot where James had lain against his chest feels jarringly cool.

James pauses for a moment, looking away, "What do you mean?"

"You're telling everyone how great they were, you didn't think I was any good?"

James smiles a little then, and looks back up at Cristiano with his dreamy expression. "You'd have to be specific about what you want me to say you're good at."

It would take less than a second to lean in and kiss James. With the innuendo, that distance becomes thicker with the weight of that unspoken kiss. James's eyes focusing in on Cristiano's lips, mouth parted already, eyes heavy lidded. The gravity in his lips pulling at him.

He clears his throat and turns away, sipping his own champagne. They can't do this in front of people.

After the party, they take a driver back to his place, sitting at the back with just their legs touching, not speaking. Cristiano's hand reaching to rest on James's thigh absently, rubbing in small circles near the top. Feeling the way James's breathing holds as he skims higher and higher before going back down again. Staring out the window, incapable of making any kind of small talk in front of his driver, not wanting to ruin the moment with something shallow, the touch between them enough.

Reaching home and pulling James up to his bedroom. Kissing him as they walk through, a relief finally, having his mouth on him. James tasting dark, like soured alcohol, moaning and loud about every kiss, every touch. His body so awake with nerves that being touched anywhere feels good.

Fucking him in bed, James wanting it hard and fast. Not letting Cristiano slow down, like he's spent all day in foreplay, and how much he needs it drives into him. Wanting to see how much they can both take, James louder than he's ever been, like he doesn't even know the sounds he's making. Cristiano fucking him harder and harder to get more of that, to get James losing himself completely, till they both come quickly, harshly, collapsing on top of him.

James laying there beneath him, limp, breathing ragged, eyes shut, out of it.

He blinks his eyes open and they look at each other for a minute, a moment of sudden sleepy intimacy. Two survivor's of an El Clasico, washed ashore together.

And then James is giggling.

The intensity of the moment too much for him. Amused at seeing Cristiano get like this, so sober, so concentrated. At having been serious together for too long. Cristiano grinning at his amusement in turn, feeling that ache of tenderness he has for him, for how sweet and bright eyed he always is. He leans in to kiss James's open laughing mouth, claiming it for himself.

James's giggling quietening then, inhaling deeply around the kiss, like he needs both Cristiano and oxygen to breathe.

He's never been with anyone who laughs in bed before, and James does it all the time. At inopportune moments, just as Cristiano's getting into a rhythm with him, turning from moaning into a sudden giggling fit. Having to wait patiently for him to stop, James apologizing inbetween laughter. At first it had felt almost like a dig to Cristiano, like his seduction techniques weren't cutting it. But he's learned that James can't take anything too seriously, can see the humor in anything.  
  
Sometimes he'll fuck him harder in response, until James can't laugh, can't do anything besides try to catch his breath.

But normally, James giggling will be enough to send him into laughter too, both of them collapsing on top of each other for minutes like that, breathless and giddy together.

James is still grinning when he presses his head into the crook of Cristiano's neck, wrapping himself around his waist. Murmuring to Cristiano about how he's good at everything, the best, the greatest.

Falling asleep like that, worn out.

Cristiano spends a while longer awake. Running his hands through James's hair, finding himself focusing on the sounds of his breathing, like listening to the distant sound of rain or the tide.

Everything in his world calm and at peace.

**

 


	19. Chapter 19

**

It isn't just James anymore.

Now it's Cristiano who hovers around James in the dressing room after games. Who waits for him outside the stadium so they can walk in together. Cristiano teasing him during training like it was the sole purpose of his footballing career, making James laugh till his cheeks were all red after a nutmeg.

That secret between them thick as smoke, as real as a pulse.

To the point that Marcelo jokingly calls him out on it after training, "Always showing off to your crush like that."

An embarrassed grin suddenly, trying to play it off, "I show off to everyone."

Marcelo laughing at him pointedly, "You've never tried to show me one of your no look back heel flicks before."

"Is this your way of asking me to show you my back heel flicks?" Smirking, but they both know he's been busted.

Reaching his car and Marcelo turns to look at him a little more seriously, making sure nobody else is around to hear them. "You be careful with him, okay?"

Cristiano doesn't drop his smile, like he has no idea what he could mean, still trying to keep playing it off as a joke.

"He's a sweet kid," Marcelo continues, expression almost concerned, cautioning, as though Cristiano is renowned for making things bitter.

"And I'm not?" Grinning back innocently, tongue between his teeth.

"No," Marcelo shakes his head at him dryly. He casts a look in the now oncoming direction of Nacho and Isco, "He's got enough to deal with without you trying one of your little seduction routines on him, okay?"

Cristiano had only continued to smirk at him as they'd said goodbye, shrugging his shoulders, feeling like a kid who'd been told off.

He doesn't tell Marcelo that it's too late, that this thing is already happening, was already real, and that it was worst than he'd thought, more dangerous, because it was more real than he'd intended it to be.

He keeps his window a little lowered as he takes the scenic route over, even though he knows Marcelo's right. It's only midday after their early training session and he's got a solid couple of hours where he doesn't have to do anything, be anywhere. He parks his car outside a town house just a half a mile from his. Gives the horn a couple of honks, flicks through his stereo until he finds a song he knows had been playing in James's apartment a few weeks back.

And he knows Marcelo's right when James comes bounding down his drive way with a grin, and he plays aloof, flicks open the passenger side door, kicks the engine on as soon as James has his seatbelt on. Doesn't even really have to look or talk to him until his car's half way to his own. James singing along to his song on the stereo, Cristiano smiling. He could write books about his little seduction routines.

He tells himself that he can't let this become serious, to hold off with things, keep him at a distance. Ignores phonecalls from him sometimes, hesitates with talking to him even just in front of the others, but lately it's beginning to feel like he's depriving himself of something basic like air or water or a ball between his feet.

When Cristiano shuts his bedroom door behind them, James is laughing as he kisses him, impatient for the intimacy. He hated not being able to touch him in public, or even in private sometimes. It's been three days since they've been alone together, and his body is wide awake with longing.

Cristiano's phone starts ringing and he grins, tells James to give him a minute, he's gotta take this real quick.

He sits on the bed to take the call and James is sighing, annoyed at this interruption, at being kept from him any longer, starts to kiss the back of his neck. Presses up against Cristiano's back, hands moving to cup over his crotch as he sucks in kisses to his skin, peeling off his own clothes as he does. Cristiano tilting his head a little to allow him access but continuing to talk on the phone, as though he doesn't have a hungry mouth on his neck, an impatient hand rifling through his zipper.

By the time Cristiano hangs up James is in nothing but his underwear. Wanting Cristiano to see him through the material like this, how heavy his body is in longing, how much he needs him.

Cristiano's still teasing, standing above him in bed. Takes his time undressing, button by button. Makes conversation about the day as he does. His top still on, his belt still on.

James getting frustrated, impatient. Pulling him down into bed with him by the corners of his shirt. Straddling his clothed lap, thrusting his hips into him.

Cristiano doesn't move to encourage him, lets James thrust against him in nothing but his underpants. Lets James hold Cristiano's arms down, grinding against him, use him, a wild animal marking love and lust. Wants to see how far he'll take it.

Until Cristiano thinks James could come from this alone, his eyes rolling, hips stuttering.

He gives into him, starts to move to unzip his fly before James takes over, fast fingers over and under his clothes, and he wonders if James has always been like this. So needy in bed, so hot to the touch. That ego of his wondering if this is something about them, about him.

James leaning down to kiss him as he enters but too needy to kiss properly, fucking himself on his cock hard and deep.

When he's close he leans back into bed, using only his thigh muscles to keep grinding into him as Cristiano strokes him, sitting up, watching. James putting on a show, writhing and pleading, murmuring a stream of consciousness, "please I'm gonna I'm gonna --" hissing, "Mmmm fuck fuck fuck--" Entranced as James's hips arch up higher onto him, his whole body shivering as he comes.

Pulling out to finish on his stomach, James sighing as he watches him.

He gets up to clean them off, James all soft and coy, smiling dazedly like in a dream.

When he returns from the bathroom he finds James unmoved from where they'd lain together in bed. Still naked, watching Cristiano through eyes he didn't bother to fully open. Languid, sensual. James was relaxed, cocky even after sex. Smiling at him in a way that belied the power he had, the knowledge that he turned Cristiano on. It was a different side to James, one he'd had to peel back, wait for. Almost embarrassing at times, having James staring at him like that, shamelessly, eyes frisking and groping him. The way they palmed over his crotch, lingering heavy as a kiss, confident in his effect.

He sits up as Cristiano approaches, reaching for him with a half smile. Leans in to start pressing soft kisses to his pelvis, his hip, the cut of his v line. Cristiano watching, a hand in his hair, encouraging. James grins and looks up to catch his gaze as he begins to suck and kiss at the still wet tip. He hisses, jerking back, skin still sunburn sensitive. James doesn't pull away, instead he moves back in to press gentle grazing kisses over it, around it. Not with the intent to arouse, but kisses for the sake of them. For the touch, the intimacy.

When James looks up at him again, Cristiano leans down to kiss him for a slow wet second for those same reasons.

He sighs when he pulls back, giving James's hair a last quick brush as he moves away, opening a drawer to find some clean underpants, socks.

James goes back to watching him as he does, yawning and stretching his arms out above him. "Why are you getting dressed?" voice sulky. He doesn't move to cover up or get dressed, unapologetic in his own post coital raw state.

"Some of us can't spend all day in bed," Cristiano flashes him a grin as he rifles through his dress shirts, "I'm meeting up with Irina."

James's gaze flickers over to the window, like he's just remembered the world outside of them exists. He's quiet for a second as Cristiano pulls on his underwear, a pair of dark jeans. "Irina?" No longer looking at him, expression down turned, the world outside all too real again.

Shrugging at him as he pulls on a shirt, "She's got a fashion show red carpet thing."

James sits up, bedsheets like a tornado of their remains around his waist, eyes wide and fixed on Cristiano. "Do you guys like kiss and... stuff?" Not wanting to miss his reaction. A question like a yanked tooth.

Cristiano looks back at the dress shirts lined up in front of him. How it feels to have someone voice something like that, jealousy laid bare, as naked as James is. "For the cameras."

He hasn't considered Irina in a while, she'd never really interfered with anything that mattered in his life. Nobody had ever been jealous of her. Doesn't know if James could ever live a life like that, giving kisses that weren't confessions, hiding that oil drum heart on his sleeve, a life that wasn't as close to his bone as possible.

"You guys do a lot for the cameras," James's voice a pout. He'd seen photos of them half naked together, draped all over each other. Letting himself feel it now, jealousy throbbing like a wound.

"It's just, y'know... for show," words feeling more hollow. Staring at those shirts, avoiding look back at James. Those eyes that made him feel guilty for things he hadn't even done. He doesn't say, we haven't actually kissed in public since I first kissed you. He doesn't say, he hasn't kissed anyone else since. He doesn't say, you're the one people should be jealous about.

He sighs and finishes getting dressed, leaving James only to stare as his body gets erased from reach.

He approaches him in bed when he's done and James is still sulking. Giving an exaggerated pout, reaching for Cristiano's hand, tugging on it. "You know, it's not polite to leave someone right after you do that to them," James's voice slow and drunk sounding, the voice he uses before sex.

Cristiano grinning, "I'm pretty sure that was all you."

James continues to tug at his hand. Cristiano thinking about Marcelo's words, that nagging voice of his conscience.

But he doesn't resist, lets James pull him back down into bed.

Falling beside him he lets James tuck his head into his chest, his arms slipping around his waist. James in nothing but his bedsheets, Cristiano fully dressed.

James shuts his eyes and takes another deep breath, that instant deep hit of his cologne drowning him, like his body's been lacking him in the scant minutes he's been out of bed.

"Stay five more minutes," a sigh.

Cristiano laughs but doesn't move away. Five minutes never hurt anyone, he wants to tell Marcelo. Five minutes is nothing.

He leaves after thirty, when he's sure James is asleep, soft and dreamy as a cat in the sun.

**


	20. Chapter 20

*

  
He's a little red carpet drunk when he arrives at James's place later that night.

His evening had been fun enough, he couldn't deny he enjoyed the kind of showbiz scene he and Irina had together. The way paparazzi would fight to get the best shot of them walking in, how fashion designers would insist on being seated next to them during shows, offer to design them looks, have them on covers. But after a few glasses of champagne and being surrounded by models with his arm around Irina, he'd started feeling a little restless. His shirt had still reeked of the afternoon he'd had, of an aftershave that wasn't his, and when she'd leaned in to kiss him goodbye for the night he'd found himself ducking away a little so that she'd only connected with his cheek.

James is in only his sweatpants when he opens his door, hair all soft and mussed up from having been in bed.

Cristiano's arm on the door frame, leaning in to his personal space already, all but looking like a highschool senior there to pick up a prom date.

"Hey." James is staring at Cristiano through a forehead ruffled in confusion, concern. "Everything okay?"

Suspicious as to why Cristiano could possibly be there again. As if something bad to have happened somewhere. As if only a catastrophe could lead Cristiano to see him twice in one day.

But Cristiano's nodding, grinning, happy to be there, to see him, leaning in for his kiss. James inhales around it but pulls away a little. Cristiano smells of women's perfume and he thinks about Irina's arms over him, his mouth over hers, that scent sickly sweet.

Cristiano's looking at him and then behind, at his hesitation, "Not interrupting anything... am I?"

James is grinning despite himself, shakes his head, opens the door to let Cristiano walk in behind him. "You guys had fun at the show?"

Cristiano's undoing his jacket, running a hand through his hair, not interested in talking about his night. The way he feels like a fraud some times, how much he has to be another person, an infidelity of himself.

"Do you reckon I could be a model?" Cristiano's saying instead as they enter his bedroom, changing tack, arms stretched out above him.

James's eyes trail over him the way Cristiano wants. He looks good in his suit jacket, a white shirt all done up, that sculpted Michelangelo figure of him in his clothes, and James thinks about how striking he and Irina must've looked together. He looks away. "Isn't that what your Instagram is for?"

Cristiano's grinning, rolling his eyes good naturedly.

He's picking up a game controller and Cristiano looks at him then at the screen, a game of Football Manager on pause, then back at him. "You've been playing this all day?"

James is smiling, pointedly, "It's transfer deadline day."

Cristiano laughs, watches him for a few seconds, and James doesn't look back at him.

On the drive over he'd been thinking about James with him that afternoon, the way he'd barely let him breathe without touching him. The way James's eyes could make him feel more desired than a room full of models had.

"You know, one of Irina's friends asked about you," Cristiano walking about his room, starting to undo the buttons on his shirt, letting it hang open meaningfully. Wanting James's eyes back on him.

They are, eyebrows raised.

"She thinks you're really cute," A strange smirk on his face, "Wanted to know if I'd pass on her number."

James is blinking. "Yeah?"

"I told her..." shrugging his arms out now, a long exhale, "I told her I thought you were maybe seeing someone." Looking away from James, like he doesn't know if that's true. Maybe James is seeing someone. Maybe he isn't. Pretending to feel indifferent about the subject as he starts studying some lint on his cuffs.

James stares at him quietly for a second and then raises a finger to the corner of his mouth, "You've got a bit of lipstick there."

Cristiano's hand comes up to brush it off quickly, and he turns to find one of James's mirrors to make sure it's gone. Then gets distracted by fixing his hair.

James's attention is back on his video game when he turns back, so Cristiano takes a seat next to him in bed, squinting at his transfer decisions, "Zlatan?"

"He's on a free," that defensive pouting voice, not turning to look at him.

Cristiano smirking, "You not gonna fork out for me then?"

"You're out of my price range," James turns to look at him pointedly, "Besides, I tried and you turned me down."

Cristiano's laughing, but James still has that sulk to him, as if having taken his computer game rejection personally.

"You know me," Cristiano sighs and leans in now, presses a kiss to the soft skin below James's ear, voice hushed, "Always playing hard to get."

James tilts his head away from his mouth, but his pout softens. He continues with his game, selecting players and arguing over salaries with agents, playing at the world he lived in, as Cristiano presses little kisses onto his neck. "If I don't get this done, I'll be screwed for the whole season."

A smile kissed onto his skin, "Getting screwed for a whole season? Maybe if you'd offered me that I could've negotiated."

Cristiano can see James's embarrassed grin in the way his skin flushes all the way to his neck.

He moves back a little but keeps his face inches from James's neck. Just staring at him playing, not saying anything.

James continues his game but the warmth of his gaze is distracting and Cristiano can see him fighting back a smile, "Stop that."

"I'm not doing anything," Cristiano says, whisper balmy on James's neck, continuing his stare; at the flush of James's cheeks, the way everything about him lights up when he smiles.

Now Cristiano opens his mouth, breath skimming over his skin.

"Stop it." James's voice a little higher, giggling like he's being tickled.

Cristiano holds his hands up, "I'm not even touching you."

James rolls his shoulders like he's shaking him off, doesn't move away.

Cristiano leans back in, sliding his tongue out and almost, almost touching him. Licking the strip of air between them. James shudders a little, shoulder reflexively coming up again. "Would you stop."

"I can't help that you are so, so..." Cristiano's laughter hot on his skin, the goose pimples on his skin satisfying to watch unfurl, that effect he has on him. "Sensitive."

Now he does cheat, his hand sliding onto James's crotch, curling around the bulge there. James is silent, unmoving. No longer protesting or laughing, breathing slowing, waiting. Cristiano shifts his hand so that James's erection sits unhidden along his hip.

"I haven't even touched you and you're so, so ready, hmm. You been thinking about it?" That voice on his neck, inside his head.

James was always thinking about it. Always losing a battle in trying not to think about it.

Cristiano starts to slowly stroke along him through the material, admiring how much James's body calls to his.

"Maybe I shouldn't let myself get a big ego, maybe you've always been this..." and his fingernails lightly skim backwards against his balls through his clothes, James visibly shivering again, "Sensitive."

James exhales through his mouth. "You'd get a big ego anyway."

Cristiano laughing against his neck. James grinning too, but red, embarrassed, exposed.

"Did your girlfriends get you like this," Ego and insecurity on display, a contest he sometimes had with imaginary women James had dated, "I bet they ignored the balls, girls always do. They have no idea how nice it feels when they're sucked just right, hmm?"

James isn't saying anything, Cristiano taking his silence as confirmation.

He could tell Cristiano was curious about his ex girlfriends sometimes. He'd ask him at night where the craziest place he'd had sex was, about his first time, his first kiss, then he'd kiss his throat, his fingers. Ask him about his fantasies, as though that wasn't it. As though Cristiano's hand between his thighs and his mouth against his neck weren't every fantasy he'd never known he'd had.

"Nobody's tried talking it to death before..." James is smiling, eyes on the screen.

Cristiano hot laughter on his skin, squeezing his head a second till James flinches, before he leans down and soothes it with a wet kiss through the material.

James trying to be aloof, to not react, not let Cristiano win this so easily, but Cristiano's sucking him in and flicking his tongue around and his hips start to shake from holding himself back.

Cristiano leans back, smiling, satisfied. Face to face with him now, inches from him, and James prefers it like this. When they looked at each other in bed, liked to see the way Cristiano's eyelids drooped, the swell of his mouth after he'd been kissing any part of him, the way he looks like desire feels.

"I like that about you," Cristiano's soft voice serious now, a hand on his chin, "That you are so, so sensitive."

And he does; the way James could be like someone starved of touch no matter how long he'd had his hands on him, someone who hadn’t been let out in days, sensitive to sunlight, how you could blister him by looking at him too long. How it made James's eyes and hands so honest, untainted, all those veins of him ripped open, laid bare. The way nothing about James knows how to lie.

Cristiano's the aggressive one, the one who refuses to let James back down, cupping his neck with his hand to open his mouth to his, not giving him time to breathe. James lets Cristiano kiss into him, pinning him to the headboard with his mouth.

Sometimes Cristiano feels like James forgets how to relax properly until he’s given him a hundred deep sea kisses first, needing that trust of skin to skin and mouth to mouth before he can trust anything else with him.

He still smells like Irina, like a night out in someone else's arms, a type of betrayal, but when he kisses James he tastes like his Cristiano, like heat and desire and every fantasy he's ever had.

Under him, letting Cristiano pull down his sweatpants, hands stroking him through the kiss. Wanting James helpless, surrendered; his. He's spent the night being someone else, wants to be himself, be the person James sees when he looks at him.

He holds James's hips down to get the rhythm right, not letting him touch himself. Rendering him helpless, eyes rolling back, mouth slack, moaning unintelligibly.

His hands moving to grab at Cristiano's hips or over his own chest. Everything sensitive, everything craving touch.

The thing Cristiano loves is being able to wreck James, totally undo him, get him unrecognisable beneath him. From being someone who could be so self-conscious that he would barely let himself speak sometimes for fear of messing up his words, to letting Cristiano take control, losing himself with him.

James coming hard over his stomach, nothing but the whites of his eyes showing, taking panting breaths. Clenching hard around Cristiano in a way that makes his own breath stall, jolt. Continuing to get James off until he was too sensitive, crying out, pushing his hands away. Then fucking into him more slowly, gently. James whining through his kisses as he comes into him.

Getting into bed after and James was quiet next to him, shivering. Bringing up the covers for them, pulling James to him, arms around him. He could sneak back home, he could. But James is holding onto him tight, breathing heavy. Doesn't say anything, can't. Just presses into him, like someone burned from the sun, hurting more to go without that warmth suddenly, to go back to anything less than that fire of him everywhere inside of his skin.

Cristiano has learned that after sex sometimes, after really good sex, when he'd teased James to his limits or fucked him till he's gasping for air, he gets like this. Quiet, trembly, needs to be held, kept to him until his breathing settles.

And all he'd wanted to do with him like that, this raw naked vulnerable boy who looked and touched at him with such honesty and intensity that it pulled at places inside of him, was to protect him, keep him like this. He didn't want anyone else to ever have James like this. All wild haired and bruised lipped, so open and so his. "Baby," he'd whispered into his hair, "baby." Because he was. James nestling into his body, arms around his chest, keeping him like that till morning.

He's in love and he knows it, and it's the worst and best thing that's happening to him.

**


	21. Chapter 21

*

Waking to an alarm clock, someone else's.

He'd been having a dream that it had been raining outside and someone was singing.

Sitting up in bed and it’s still raining outside and someone is singing. Cristiano's reality is bleeding into his dreams, or maybe it’s the other way around.

He pulls on the shirt and underpants he'd been wearing the night before and wanders into the kitchen, finding James standing at the counter with his back to him.

He's singing along to the radio tunelessly, dressed like some type of kleptomaniac. Wearing a deep red football shirt, the name Ronaldo emblazoned across the shoulders and CR7 underwear. It's a shirt he'd worn to a Portuguese World Cup game a few years back, too big on James, wide on the shoulders, sleeves draping to the elbows. Just long enough to skim over the top of the full curve of his ass, which peeks out as he moves about making his morning espresso. Looking like a man wearing the skin of an animal he'd slain the night before.

He knows James knows he's there, but he doesn't turn to acknowledge him, pretends to be too preoccupied with his coffee.

Cristiano finally approaches, arms wrapping around James's waist from behind, mouth to his neck, inhaling him deeply.

At that he can feel James's breath intake, turning quiet and still in his arms.

"I'm sleeping with a thief," he whispers into his lover's throat, tugging at his shirt on him. Someone who'd stolen his clothes, his underwear, his heart.

"I can't go home naked," James protests lightly, voice still sleepy soft, that sensitive neck coming up whenever Cristiano places his mouth there.

"Says who," another kiss to his shoulder, making James giggle brightly.

When James had first left a sweatshirt at his place, Cristiano had brought it in for him the next day in training, wordlessly slipping it over to him with a grin in the locker room as the others had ambled around them. James embarrassing easily at the time about it because it was like acknowledging this secret in a way, a testament to the fact that these nights between them had been happening at all.

But now James leaves bits of himself over at Cristiano's all the time. Sweatshirts, jeans, underpants, socks, memories. Cristiano lets James borrow his clothes some mornings when he hasn't thought to bring a spare and though everything he has is over sized on him, James likes having excuses to wear them, likes how throughout the rest of the day at training or with friends he'll feel drowned in Cristiano's scent, like Cristiano's standing right behind him. He likes that he's allowed to do this, that Cristiano doesn't care, that they share things. This secret between them being worn on his skin, feeling like it's not just the sweater that belongs to Cristiano, but that he does too.

"You want a cup?" James offers gently, unable to hide the smile in his voice. He doesn't move to make anything. As though waiting for something else, something more.

"Is this the part where I say I like my men like I like my coffee?" Cristiano presses a slow wet kiss into his shoulder, as though answering his own question.

"Colombian?" James manages to say, still trying to pretend that being touched like this isn't having an effect on him, his espresso being stirred slowly and stiffly. But Cristiano can feel the way his breathing has slowed, the way his back arches into him, the way his body craves contact with his.

"No... tied up in a burlap sack and dragged along the Andes by a donkey."

James is giggling, which makes Cristiano grin as he presses another kiss into his skin, makes him want to do it over and over.

This ache he has for him is something he'd found himself tripping up over the last few weeks, like tripping over your own feet.

He feels like something inside of him had opened up, had become snagged on something, had started to unravel.

He wants to ask James things sometimes. If he's ever been in love before. With who. A crime scene investigator trying to trace tracks. Figure out what it was he was dealing with. Diagnose himself. Find out what had befallen everyone else with the same condition. How many survivors.

He knows his own ex-boyfriends would be bemused at the scenario. He normally liked independent guys. Guys who didn't answer the phone to him, had been around the block as often as he scored. Guys who would've found James corny, his sweetness overbearing. Guys who he never had to hold after sex, who never acted like anything could be too much or too intimate the way James sometimes did, where a lone dark glance across a room could unravel him. Who took every fuck so meaningfully, even giving quick morning blowjobs some kind of reverence.

The truth was that he'd been finding himself distracted by the shape of his mouth, by the smell of his hair. James relaxed him, quieted him, never tried to ask for more from him, and it's easy, one of the easiest relationships he's ever had. Being with someone who understood him, tolerated him, even at his worst.

He'd broken up with guys who wanted more from him, more commitment, more investment. Who'd told him he was hard to read and hard to put up with at times, and here was Cristiano finding it harder and harder to not have James with him every night.

"You needed something, baby?" he whispers into James's neck.

James freezing for just a second long enough that Cristiano knows he'd heard him say it the night before. He turns around to look up at him, smiling, grinning, childlike, that rawness of him. A word that split him open.

Other guys he'd dated would have laughed off being called anything like that, would've probably hit him, cringed, called him something rude in turn, but Cristiano's discovering he enjoys this, the power simple words have over him. The way he gets to claim James like this, how much James likes being claimed.

They'd think that he was just in it for the sex, for conquering the pretty boy who'd never kissed another guy, that he'd gone soft in his old age, and maybe he has.

When he was younger a kid like James would've been nothing but a tease, a fuck, a heart to break.

But it's different, he's different.

"You... need some?" James's eyes liquid heat on him, coffee staining his lips.

Cristiano caught staring at him like this, and he's nodding, yeah, he does.

James takes another sip of his own, neck tilted back, and Cristiano moves to kiss him like that, coffee spilling into his mouth, James's tongue hot and thick with arabica, spilling between them, staining his shirt, running over his skin. Cristiano doesn't care.

"Tastes like you," Cristiano's low honest voice when they part, words James had used for him a morning a few weeks back, "Sweet."

James's eyes are ducked down at this, shiny, so easily embarrassed by him, so open to him, and Cristiano kisses James like that again, not letting him get away from him, not letting him not be kissed.

Kissing him until he gets what he wants: James sighing into him, body going slack, underwear getting tight with him. How hot his mouth is, thinking about having it on other parts of his body. Letting him get harder, till James is pressing his hips into him so that he can feel the effect he's having, rocking against him gently. Lets it get to James breaking apart out of breath, eyes and expression dark and serious, mind blank with need.

James smiles, murmurs low, “This is so much better than coffee.”

Cristiano over complicating everything and James was so easy, so simple. No betrayal with his hands on him. Like it didn't even occur to him that relationships were minefields, that anything could end at any time, how much it cost to be open with yourself. Cristiano had long been a thrifter, counting every penny of himself.

Then Cristiano's turning around and telling James they need to get ready for work or he's going to get in trouble - James alone, because they both know Cristiano wouldn't ever get in trouble for anything.

James groaning at him, rolling his eyes, taking a moment to get his mind working again, and Cristiano's laughing, can see James smiling in spite of himself.

Letting James wear the shirt he'd worn the night before on the way in to training, never asking for any of his things back, never pretending to not enjoy James the way James gets to claim him like this.

***


	22. Chapter 22

***

  
It's December and the Madrid city stores and streets are lit up with tinsel and fairy lights, a city like an unwrapped Christmas gift.

They're taking the car in from Cristiano's, James having spent practically every night that week at his home. They'd begun to exist together like this, inside each other's pockets, beds. Their lives bleeding into each other. He'd started finding himself adding James's favorite brand of coffee into his weekly grocery lists, tossing his clothes into his washing load some mornings, kept his car's radio station tuned in to that Latino reggaeton channel James used to unwind on car roads home. He'd even started finding himself turning down nights out with friends, telling them he was sorry he couldn't make it, maybe some other time, something had just come up. A date he was having every night of the week with the same person.

After trainings they'll walk out together and take his car back. At times James left hovering in the parking lot checking his phone, scanning doorways, waiting for him. Making Cristiano feel like some type of drug dealer, or as though James is his call boy, waiting for his hook up. On several occasions, he has to make James take the back seat on the way out so that Perez or Ancelotti don't catch them leaving together like that, James his stowaway, his contraband. Two people guilty by association, criminals by night.

But they don't talk about it, like two people under a type of hypnosis.

The winter sun starting to settle on to the early morning Madrid traffic, and James is talking, excited because his family's arriving from Colombia any day now. He'd been planning this get together with them since the summer, a time for everyone he loved to finally be on the same continent as him again. He'd been like a kid at school telling the others about it in training, talking about it on the ride in, the way his eyes would light up whenever he talked about the things he loved the most.

Cristiano can tell James gets homesick a lot. He'd bring Colombia up into conversations like she was an ex-girlfriend he'd been trying to get over. Talking about the ways she used to do things for him, the TV shows she'd watch, the music she'd listen to. There only had to be the inklings of a Colombian accent nearby for James to turn his head, get distracted, eyes distant. How he's sure the way James is almost always the first to pile on clothing during training at even the hint of a breeze, often falling asleep in one of his stolen sweaters and socks under his duvet with him, was because some part of his skin was always missing the warmth of his country, his home.

Cristiano understood that feeling of restlessness all too well, but all he had to do was take an afternoon flight and he'd be there under the Madeira sun by evening.

They'd started trading stories about their childhoods at night sometimes. How they'd both left their families so young to chase a ball and a dream. About those first few months away from home when they'd been tempted to call it quits in the middle of yet another endless night alone, run back in to their mother's arms. And he'd understood when James would talk about his father and then falter for a second, clarify his _step_ father, what that was about, what that absence was like. The way you were stepping over a crack inside yourself, trying to stop yourself from falling back in, speaking of that void. How could he not.

James's father was like speaking about a distance, his step dad had been great, but there'd been that loss, that blind spot in his life, the remains of that first betrayal in his mouth whenever he spoke. As if that tremor of loss was something he'd never be able to escape in himself, always be a little broken by.

It was easier for James to talk after sex, his stutter would fade out when he was relaxed, when nobody was rushing him. How honest he could get with Cristiano's hand to his cheek, his chin. How easy James was to talk to when he got like that, his skin so bare, his eyes so raw. The way they could make Cristiano feel brave sometimes, safe, how he'd start sharing things he hadn't intended to. Casually -- "that was before my dad started drinking" -- punctuating inadvertent stories other times, the "I miss him"'s, the "I hope he'd be proud of me"'s after some games, some goals.

James's brow creasing in concentration as he'd speak, not letting a word Cristiano would say escape him, an endless blackhole of them together. James kissing his hands, his fingers, when he didn't know what to say in response, when words got too hard for him, his mouth too broken. Times Cristiano could tell James needed to confide things in him too, words being written bare skin to bare skin, scrawled with tongues, painted with mouths.

Nights between them feeling like a different reality, time altered, like they were hitched in a tent at the end of the world.

"They're gonna try and embarrass me," James was running a hand through his hair, eyes bright against the dusky morning light.

"I think you've got that covered on your own," casting him a look during a stop, James glaring back with that easy smile. They were already nearing the training grounds, traffic thinning out around them, "Hey baby, could you pass me my sunglasses?"

James stares at him for a split second longer before his gaze falters, those cheeks pinking, starts fumbling around for them in the glove compartment.

Cristiano had started to throw that word out into conversations casually for effect when they were alone together, a word like a kiss stolen in daylight.

James was handing him the glasses, skin still flushed, "And if any of my cousins try and take a hundred selfies with you or get you to do the Siiii thing--"

"-- I'll make you do them all with me," He's laughing, checks for traffic again in the rear view, casts a look back at James, "Your mom's gonna be there?"

James nodding, grinning, excited.

"I get to meet her again?" They already had done once, months back, when James had first arrived. A time James had still been so shy around him his mother had done most of the talking.

"My mother's crazy about you," James says, those eyes bright, like Cristiano's a singer whose every album she's got alphabetized.

Cristiano throws him a fond look, "I’m sort of dating someone right now but if she's cute then…"

James is laughing, rolling his eyes.

"Does she know you're seeing someone?" Cristiano asks suddenly. Almost surprised at how tight his voice sounds, how he can't look at James directly, keeps his eyes on him through the rearview mirror.

James is silent, staring at his hands, the road and Cristiano blurring in his edges. "I've never really introduced girlfriends to her before..."

Girlfriends. Cristiano flinches at the word.

He turns to look at James directly now, ripping it off, "How would she feel if you introduced her to your boyfriend?"

James's turn to flinch, which makes Cristiano turn his head away. Wishing he hadn't seen that, wishing he hadn't caught that. The first time they'd used that word; a grenade blowing back up on him.

James still had his eyes down, expression serious, fragile, "She's not, like, homophobic but..."

The but.

"She wouldn't want her son to be gay," Cristiano finishes for him, voice flat.

James keeps his head down, doesn't say anything, staring out the window.

They continue on to training like that, not talking, not looking at each other. Two strangers suddenly, lost inside homesick worlds, a hypnosis spell broken.

When they park at the Valdebabas, Cristiano gets out first and doesn't wait for him as he slams his door shut, heading into the building.

James feeling the reverberations of that door throughout the rest of his day, mind dark and riddled with that question and the idea.

All the things he wants, all the things he can't have.

**


	23. Chapter 23

**

James had driven to Cristiano's place that night after training.

When he'd arrived Cristiano had been surprised to see him there, staring at James in his door way for a silent moment, voice abrupt, "Junior's here so you'll have to leave early if you're staying."

James had put his arms around him from behind, pressed kisses into the back of his neck. An apology like that, James the one whispering, "Baby, baby, baby."

Pressing his fingers to his mouth, letting Cristiano be aloof, letting James beg for it. Letting Cristiano see how much he wants him, needs him.

Laying in his arms after and James didn't know how to tell Cristiano that all of this scared him more often than not. That he knew it could ruin both their careers, their lives. Knew how much Cristiano was trusting in him, every night spent together like a criminal on tape caught confessing, pleading for mercy.

He'd read about an English footballer who'd come out only to commit suicide years later, heartbroken and alone. The story haunting James for weeks. Had wondered who this man had loved to be so brave like that.

Everything changed in the public eye. Living your life like that, magazine cover to magazine cover, becoming what you’re told you are. Your life reduced to headlines, soundbites, one moment played on loop in a youtube video over and over. The way you could easily be reduced to a chalk outline of a reality, nothing of you remaining for the world to see but the place where you fell hardest. Nothing but the guts of you exposed and you're just an outline, police tape; the first footballer to come out. Your love a scandal, your heart the butler in the kitchen with the candlestick.

Making you doubt yourself, making you paranoid, making you feel like you couldn’t trust anyone, and he knew Cristiano needed to trust him.

Because James would do anything to protect this, protect him.

But he could barely put whatever they were into words himself. It was like he'd entered a cult and couldn't talk to anyone about it, not even Cristiano. How unspeakable it was to be in his arms, to be kissed by him. The way putting words to it felt like a violation, like raised voices in church, holding up an undeveloped film reel to daylight. The way everything outside of them could feel hostile, invasive.

And this wasn't a game James knew how to play.

When he'd heard the crowd chanting Maricon at a game a few weeks earlier his head had jerked back, seeking out Cristiano's. That hot flush of shame burning him for a second, feeling caught, exposed. But Cristiano hadn't returned his gaze, hadn't even raised his head. For Cristiano they had become background noise already, taunts he'd become immune to as a player, but James was still hyper sensitive under his guilt, their secret.

Struggling even to confront it in himself. What it was to desire him at all. The way women had faded out to him, but how in the same way he couldn't imagine being with any other guy. He'd once told Cristiano that in bed, only for him to go silent, change the subject, act like he hadn't heard him say anything. He'd been worried he'd given too much away at the time, how much of a confession it had felt to him, but now wondered if maybe it's because Cristiano knows more about him than he does. That James could still be with other women, could still leave this as some kind of temporary madness, a fling, an experiment. The specter of that alternate reality haunting them in bed some nights.

Because if kissing him was like sticking your hand through flames then you had to live with the burns and James would find himself checking his skin in the morning for scorch marks, checking their bedsheets for ashes. Would be like Lady MacBeth seeing them in places they weren't, when Cristiano wouldn't return his calls right away or when he'd hear that word chanted in the crowd, his skin prickling as if burning. Imagining that the ashes were falling on him like Pompeii, would worry he'd only see them like they did, when it was too late, when others had seen them in him first.

Falling into a half asleep with the weight of it on him. The way the chalk outlines around them could feel so real and immutable, the way Cristiano's arms around him often never did.

**

At too-early-o clock in the morning before dawn breaks and the world breathes blue, James's alarm clock goes and they both fumble across the bed to silence it.

He starts sitting up to get out of bed, get dressed, escape the way he'd promised, letting the winter air in under the covers and Cristiano's groaning, reaching an arm out to him, "Baby, it's cold outside."

His hand is warm on his skin and James is grinning through sleep cracked eyes, "...I don't know the words to the song."

"Get back in bed idiot," he's pretty sure that's not how the song goes and it's not baby but James is giggling, letting himself back into bed, giving himself permission. He burrows under the duvet into Cristiano’s chest and lets his eyes fall closed. Everything in his world going warm again, fading out, forgetting the hostile world outside them, those thoughts inside his head like the cold night air, loud voices in church.

Just two boys pressed together under their duvet in the soft morning light.

**


	24. Chapter 24

***

James is still in bed in a half-doze by the time Cristiano finishes taking his shower. He watches as he takes a seat next to him in bed, pulls on his shoes, a dull morning light aching over him through the curtains. "I gotta go fix him some breakfast. Get him dressed. Then we can leave for work, okay?" A hand to James's sleep mussed up hair then, James smiling sleepily in response, a cat leaning into its owner's hands. "And uh, you know, I gotta tell him you're here, hmm." Looking away from James. Shrugging. Like he's not really sure if he will, if James is even there at all. A hesitation.

The sound of footsteps thundering downstairs, a dog barking; that other part of his life waking up. 

Cristiano looking back at him, "And fix your hair, okay?"

A drowsy James grin, Cristiano mussing his hair up a final time before getting up, closing the door shut behind him.

He spends a half hour downstairs getting Junior ready for school as James showers and dresses and checks his messages, checks his insta account, paces his bedroom. Wonders if he'll still have to sneak out. Wonders what it is kids talk about these days, if Junior will think he's uncool. Wonders if he'll figure them out without Cristiano having to say anything. Waiting for a test he hasn't studied for.

Then there's Cristiano at the door, peering in for a second like he isn't sure if James will still be there either. "You ready?"

James is nodding, though he isn't really, and they're standing at the door together, Cristiano in front. Not really meeting his eyes. Stalling. "Uh, so I told him someone else was here, y'know." Shrugging, reaching for the front of James's hair, absently fixing it for him again, "A teammate having a sleep over."

James is smiling, "You make me sound like a housebreaker."

He's tucking James's shirt in for him like he needs to be tidied up some more before he goes down, be made presentable. Not just a test he hasn't studied for, but a job interview.

Cristiano's giving him a look, "You have stolen most of my clothes." James is grinning and Cristiano's grinning back, but his skin's a little pink, "Like -- no kissing and stuff in front of him, you know?"

James is laughing, looking down. He knows. Knows this isn't a thing, not a real introduction thing, wants Cristiano to know too, that he's not trying to broach that subject, push that line, intrude on his relationship with his son in that way. Makes it light, "I'll tell him I've never seen you before. I don't even know how I got in here."

James still grinning and Cristiano smirking but keeps his eyes down. He's shy about this, James can tell, vulnerable. That he doesn't do this often.

Walking downstairs behind him and James feels like the child here, a kid busted for sneaking into Cristiano Ronaldo's place for the night, being escorted out.

There are morning cartoons on the TV in the front room and he hangs back as Cristiano approaches the back of his son's head on the couch, "You've brushed your teeth?"

The head of dark curls nods furiously.

"And you've got your homework in your bag?"

Another furious nod.

"And you're definitely not going to make me drive back again because you've forgotten it this time?"

A head shake, a father ruffling his son's hair.

Then he's looking behind, over at him pointedly. "You remember James, right?"

Junior nods and jumps up now, turns and immediately sprints to give him a high five, the way he does with all their team mates after games. A trained super mascot. And James is kneeling down for it ready, that sparkling boy bander smile on display, the kind of megawatt smile Cristiano wouldn't be able to hide anyway, that you'd probably still see if you threw a sheet over him.

Cristiano's picking up his school bag with a pointed exhale, signaling that it's time to leave, "So, we ready to go?"

Junior's staring at James. "You're wearing dad's shirt!"

James looks down at himself laughing awkwardly, busted. Cristiano still not looking at him, hasn't really looked at him since that night. "He uh, spilled something on himself." He's opening his front door and holding it for Junior to run ahead, "He's very clumsy. Much messier than you."

Junior sprints out to Cristiano's garage. Responsible for picking out which luxury vehicle they get to drive around in for the day.

Cristiano keeps his eyes on James as he passes, voice low, playful, "I'm introducing my child to a thief."

James can only smile as Cristiano locks his door behind them, "I don't even know who you are."

Cristiano turning to shoot another look that makes James laugh, all boyband megawatts of it lighting up his driveway, before congratulating his son on his expert choice. He too would've gone for the Maserati GranCabrio.

James sits in the back on the way in, like he's the kid being driven to school, trying to be inconspicuous as they talk. They joke and talk about Junior's school friends, a girl he teases that Junior likes, a super hero movie they'd watched the other night. James a house breaker trying to stay in the shadows, not disturb the people at home too much, trip up any alarm system.

Parking outside his school and Junior turns to James from his seat, grinning at him, those over sized Cristiano eyes of his bright, "Bye, James! I hope you score lots of goals today!" The trained super mascot of encouragement.

He watches as Cristiano takes his son's hand and walks him in, any other doting dad with any other doting kid, a hand through his son's hair. Hearing the sparkle of Junior's laughter until they disappear through the gates.

He takes the seat upfront with him on the way to work, a grown up again, Cristiano turning the radio on low as they hit the main road, both of them distracted, lost in thought.

A couple of blocks away and Cristiano's sighing like some of those thoughts are bothering him, "He's at that age where he tells everyone at school everything, you know?"

James looks at him. "Mmmhmm."

He's not sure if Cristiano's is really talking to him, has his elbow on the open window, face turned to the wind. "So it's hard to explain certain things, for him to know they're a secret."

James's eyes are fixed on him, knowing this is a conversation, this is Cristiano revealing things, opening himself up. That normally talking about his son was off limits, his most private protected space. Realizes Cristiano's off-handedly trying to apologize perhaps, for introducing him as a teammate and nothing else. Or maybe it's his son he's wanting to apologize to, for not being able to be completely honest about himself with. Wonders what that honesty would even mean.

"He wants me to get married and things, you know? It's hard for him to understand." Cristiano's grimacing, like it's costing him something to share these things. There's a sting, a bitterness, that hostile outside world, those chalk outlines visible. James doesn't say anything, doesn't prompt for any more than Cristiano needs to share.

Instead he reaches out and puts his hand on Cristiano's thigh, keeps it there during the ride in, fingers in soft soothing motions. He's a thief he wants to say, but he'd never take anything Cristiano didn't want him to take, he'd never ask for more than he'd give, never.

And if they ever found him in chalk they'd find both of them.

**


	25. Chapter 25

**

  
They hold the year's Christmas party at Sergio's house.

It's a party just for the team, no wives or girlfriends, and Marcelo had teased James before that this wouldn't make much of a difference to him. He'd become the team's designated bachelor, the one the others would try and suggest dates for or tease in front of women as some type of hobby like they'd long since given up on the idea that James knew how to talk to women himself. James only ducking his head away, bashful with the attention, embarrassed by the girls and by his teammates.

Sergio was already champagne drunk encouraging a dance off in the front room that Marcelo was avoiding until he was tipsy enough to deal with watching Iker attempting to twerk.

"Marcelo, parceiro!" Cristiano's loud voice in his ear, enveloped from behind by a bear hug.

A big smile from Cristiano followed behind by James, who pulls him into a life affirming hug of his own.

"Sorry we're late, Madrid traffic is hell around the holidays." They'd arrived together and it had become something Marcelo was used to, seeing them as some type of unit. Where there was one, there was the other.

"Maybe that makes you the lucky ones, you've just missed Sergio trying to teach Kroos how to salsa."

Laughter, Cristiano shrugging as he reaches for one of Marcelo's proffered champagne glasses to pass to James, "Don't worry, give him enough to drink and he'll put on a show for free later." James laughs but his elbow's nudging into Cristiano's ribs in faux annoyance and Cristiano gives Marcelo another look with a grin, "Sorry, I forget, sometimes he charges."

With that they're both slipping into the party to more greetings, more tipsy hugs, more laughter.

Marcelo finds himself being pulled into arbitrating a contentious FIFA game between Isco and Carvajal and an incredibly drunken Britney Spears karaoke off with Sergio, who knows far more words and dance moves to a Britney song than any Real Madrid captain has reason to.

He finishes to high fives and applause from the others, leaving Sergio to take more karaoke requests, taking a seat with Cristiano, James and Gareth in the back. Sitting by Sergio's immaculately gold crested fireplace, fully furnished across the top with photos of the things he clearly cherished the most, his family and the Undecima. 

Cristiano's arm was around James's shoulder, proprietorially, the way they almost always sat together now. James taking sips from champagne, Gareth on the couch in front, a three way conversation charitably being attempted in broken English, Spanish and Portuguese.

Gareth was saying, "Didn't you two know each other from before?"

James was smiling turning to look at Cristiano, "In Munich, I saw you score those two goals on them."

Bale was laughing, "You know, I played that game too."

But Cristiano was shaking his head at James, "No, no, no. We met before that. At a restaurant in Portugal." He was grinning with wide eyes fixed on James, pointedly, like he couldn't believe he'd forgotten. And James was quiet, looking down, staring at a spot on his jeans. He'd long assumed Cristiano hadn't remembered, had seen him that day as just another fanboy asking for an autograph, when he'd spent that entire night feeling something like lightning in his veins, in his stomach. That he'd met his hero, the way it had made James feel a type of burning hope about his ambition, his career. A twenty year old who'd never dreamed he would play alongside his favorite player one day, spending that night dreaming it.

Gareth was watching them, saying in English, "Sometimes it's like you two are brothers."

Cristiano was smirking, whispering a translation to James who barked out a laugh and says something back to him in Portuguese and they both start laughing. Turning to look at each other laughing harder, then at Gareth, then at each other, laughing into their hands, red-faced.

A private joke, Gareth left staring at them both with his eyebrows raised wondering what he'd said that was so funny.

On the way to get James another glass of champagne, Marcelo throws an arm around Cristiano.

"What's it illegal for brothers to do together?"

Cristiano hesitates a moment before turning to Marcelo, eyes a warning, "Listen in on people's conversations, parceiro."

With that, he left him standing there, turning to look back at James and Gareth awkwardly trying to make polite conversation in broken Spanish.

When Cristiano dropped a topic it meant it was dropped, if you tried to broach it without permission then so would you be.

As the party drunkenly winds down, someone puts a movie on Sergio's widescreen in the front room, something involving an endless series of explosions and the world almost but never quite ending.

Cristiano's sat back on the couch with that arm draped around James’s shoulder, and it was different seeing them together in front of him like this.

He'd seen them share looks and hugs before, but not like this. The way James would turn to him, seek him out, unshy, confident in Cristiano's attention. And Cristiano, who was often all edges and sarcasm, softening his gaze when looking at James, smiling as he spoke, almost submissive, almost shy, almost unrecognizable. When Arbeloa interrupted to talk about an upcoming game, Cristiano's softness would dissipate, a guard going back up, back to being Cristiano Ronaldo, the professional, the superstar. But James would nudge or tap him gently and he'd disregard what was being said to turn his focus back, letting only James have the full force of his attention, vulnerability. Nobody else had noticed them and it was all Marcelo could see.

Cristiano continued leaning in to crack jokes about the movie as they watched, eyes fixed on James's laughter in response, prompting Cristiano to lean in to say something else, tell another joke, keep James giggling like that next to him. When he doesn’t think anyone is looking he plants a kiss to the back of his neck, which makes James go quiet and still, as buildings are blown up and the world doesn't quite end in front of them. Marcelo back to wondering what illegal activities it is that brother's get up to.

Half an hour later they’re making excuses to leave. They need sleep before training, James has been drinking champagne all night so clearly he can't drive and Cristiano's happy to take him home, they live a few houses down from each other, right?

When Marcelo hugs them goodbye and whispers "Be careful, okay?" to each of them, he means it.

**


	26. Chapter 26

*

 

The first time he hears about the break up is in a headline he sees flash across his twitter feed the night before the Ballon D'Or ceremony.

He blinks, reading it again, and again. Clicking the story. Feeling a little breathless as he does, something like panic or giddiness in his lungs.

He spends the rest of the night googling stories about them, reading the same story in the same words on dozens of different websites, as though seeking anything new or meaningful he can infer from it.

The same obsessive way he'd find himself reading Cristiano's interviews in the papers sometimes, as though trying to unravel a Da Vinci code, pick up on anything about him that he might have missed, some insight into understanding him, understanding them. Then turning to the back pages and reading his horoscope, then Cristiano's. As if they held the same weight as those interviews, Cristiano often as distant and unreadable to him as any star had ever been.

He doesn't call him. If he'd wanted James to know, he would've told him. Wonders how much he actually knows about Cristiano, how many secrets he keeps from him, decisions he doesn't even factor into.

Finds himself getting lost in photo galleries of them together at events. Beautiful and symmetrical, arms around each other, kissing, the perfect couple, that photoshoot of them practically naked together -- and closes the browser. Checks for messages on his phone again, resists the urge to message him first.

He tries to pretend this means nothing to him, that it means nothing for them.

Falling asleep with the laptop open on his bed, the headline of that story glowing in his room all night.

*

Everything at the ceremony happens so quickly.

As they'd read out the Puska nominees, James had sat in the audience feeling every muscle in his body curled up tight in his chest. He hadn't been able to eat or sleep in the days beforehand, that restless jittery energy caught in his bones now.

There'd been suit fittings, endless journalists with cameras pressed up to his mouth, being ushered everywhere, pulled this way and that, fans everywhere, people telling him where to be, where to sit.

When they read out his name and everyone cheers it's almost dread that takes over him. Feeling it all drowning in him as he heads to the stage, to face that microphone, a crowd of people he's admired all his life staring back at him with wide expectant eyes, his mouth feeling thick with it.

That silence in his head as he tries to remember the speech he'd memorized beforehand, words he'd tried to practice in his bedroom like kicking a ball, and he opens his mouth and -- everything's fine, he sounds like anyone else, nothing sticks to his throat, they clap for him and he smiles, breathes out, muscles relaxing. Gets back to his seat with the weight of that achievement in his hands and starts letting this all feel real to him, enjoyable.

It's different when Cristiano's name gets called out and he goes up to accept his third Ballon D'Or.

Something swelling up and swooping around inside his chest as he watches him onstage.

Cristiano no longer his teammate or friend or lover up there, but his hero.

**

After the show there's a huge crowd in the hallway outside and it's people around Cristiano, it's everyone around him. Other players, Mendes, his manager, event staff, security, noise, attention all around him, and James hovers there from a distance, waits.

Waits for Cristiano to look up from the conversation he's having, how he knew he would, their eyes meeting and his eyebrows raising and he's grinning, face lighting up. James's heart fluttering and stilling at the same time.

Ignoring everyone else, ignoring all the conversation, he walks up to him, reaches his arms around him for a proper hug. Presses his face into his neck and shuts his eyes, breathing him in. Letting this moment belong to him, to them.

They're both laughing at nothing, out of happiness, each other.

"Congratulations," Cristiano says first, lightly tipping his chin with his fingers when they part, "I told you you were gonna win, didn't I?"

"Siiiii," James can only say, and they're laughing again, Cristiano ruffling his hair, pulling him into another quick hug.

James has to step away for a moment as Cristiano deals with all his admirers, make calls to his family back home.

A sound of a party in the background as his mother answers, speaking to him through tears of joy, congratulating him as he consoles her. Phone being passed from one excited cousin and aunt and uncle to another. James laughing, giddy at all this, this year sinking in for him finally, everything he's achieved, how far he's come.

Ears still ringing from his family's screams, from having to shout to be heard in his country thousands of miles away, James turns to walk back inside, find Cristiano.

He sees him standing there facing him, but deep in conversation with someone else.

James stops mid-stride, distracted by Cristiano's face. His smile, that softness to him, intimate, his guard down. The way he was when they were alone together, the way he was in bed--

Cristiano looks up and their eyes catch. He pauses and stares at James for a faltering second, like he's distracted too. The person he's with turns their head to see who he's looking at and Cristiano looks away, but the person he's with smiles on seeing it's him, grins with his whole face. It's Ricardo Kaka and James reflexively smiles back, suddenly wishing he had an out, an escape. He's intruding on something and he should leave, he should -- but Kaka's saying in Spanish, "Hey, it's good to meet you, James! Congratulations on your World Cup!" giving him a big hug, as if they've been friends for years.

James returns the embrace, thanking him in Portuguese, telling him how honored he is to meet him, feeling shy like this, an outsider in every way.

"Você fala Português?" Kaka's smiling, impressed.

"He spent 3 years in Porto," Cristiano says then, as if he's James's walking wikipedia page, but doesn't look at him.

"Of course, of course. I remember." Kaka's saying, and James knows it's polite, that he doesn't, the way most people had never heard of him before the World Cup.

Then there's more loud voices in Portuguese and Neymar's there with his friends, wrapping his arms around Kaka, and he's with Messi and his wife, and Iniesta, and Thierry Henry, and suddenly it's like they're surrounded by every idol James has ever had in his life, every poster on his bedroom wall as a teenager.

Kaka's talking with the Brazilian's and David Luiz is winking at him from across the way, and everyone is catching up on each other's lives, shared memories together, how their kids are doing. Everyone knowing each other, having played with each other or sat next to each other at endless other award shows and James listens silently, a foreigner to all of this, to all of them. Back to feeling overwhelmed by how much he feels like a fraud, like a kid.

Cristiano was making conversation with Di Maria about playing for United and then there's Messi's voice, talking about a volley he'd just scored and looking right at him, "It wasn't as good as James's goal against Uruguay though."

All those eyes from every poster on his bedroom wall suddenly focusing on him, and he takes a breath, feeling the words lodging in his throat, "Th-th-th-thank y-you."

Messi's polite smile and champagne raise to his goal, to his award.

James's skin feels too tight, that stutter like arms around his throat, pinpricks of sweat along his forehead.

He feels an arm around his shoulder, that comforting over powering scent of an aftershave, pulling him to his side playfully. James's arm reaching around his waist for support, under his suit jacket. Doesn't turn to look up at him, just leans in to him, like he's the only thing holding him up. Cristiano's talking to the others, and he's focusing on the weight of that arm around him, the press of those fingers.

"Irina's well?" Someone asks, and James doesn't turn to look at Cristiano.

"She's good, always good," he says, and the conversation shifts. Nobody mentions the breakup.

Breathing deep, drinking more champagne, on his third glass, his body tingly, head elsewhere, focusing on Cristiano's voice, how deep and easy he was to listen to. Turns to look at him as he talks, and he's beautiful and brilliant and real, and his. He gets to see him like this and he's his, why does he worry about anything else when there's this, there's them, and alcohol and winning awards and how everything in his life feels like it's been leading up to this moment, up to this night. Cristiano turns to look at him, and James gets lost in his mouth, how close it is, how much more relaxed he'd be if he could have it on his --

Cristiano clears his throat, squeezes his shoulder again in response. "You just have to stay awake for a few more hours."

James leans into him, voice low and throaty, "Why, what are we doing in a few hours?"

A smirk and a whisper into his neck, "Seeing whose suit looks better on my bedroom floor."

James laughing, heady, enjoying being flirted with, having Cristiano's eyes on him as he grins back.

Kaka's manager is telling him they have to shoot some promo interviews for the show and he's telling her to give him a second, then turns to Cristiano. He leans in to press a kiss to his cheek, hovers there, "You gonna be staying at the hotel here tonight?"

Cristiano steps back a little, his eyes dipping, a shrugging half shoulder. The way he's shy again, vulnerable, "I gotta get home for training tomorrow."

A flicker of disappointment across Kaka's face, then he smiles, "Of course, of course. Send Junior my love."

A pause, nodding, "Give Luca and Isabella a hug from me. And, uh, my regards to Caroline."

Kaka's easy smile, a knowing grin, tips Cristiano's chin with a thumb, "Maybe we'll catch up next time, huh."

James is staring at his watch, the floor, doesn't look up at Cristiano. An intruder to his life sometimes, a man with his face pressed up against the glass when he should be looking away, eyes focusing and unfocusing on the numbers. He's had too much to drink and it's been too long a night.

The others are all starting to drift away, and then there's Cristiano's hand at the back of his neck, a whisper, "You ready to make a break for it?"

James laughing, like he never thought he'd ask.

**

Cristiano's driver takes them back to his place from the airport.

James falls into an almost asleep on the way, worn out from his nerves and excitement. Cristiano on the phone to people, letting them congratulate him, his arm around James's shoulder, occasionally gesticulating with it as he speaks and nudging James back into consciousness. Cristiano smelling warm and earthy, like the way his bed smells in the morning, like something that had become memory to him, dreams.

Cristiano hangs up for a second and there's a silence as the car speeds through the early morning Madrid streets, darkness bathing them.

He exhales when he turns to James, pauses for a second with a soft smile. "You still awake?"

James stretches out a little, eyes a little hazy, "My suit's got a date with your bedroom floor."

Cristiano smirking, rests his hand on James's knee, toys with the edge of his jacket a little. Both their ties are off, both their top shirt buttons are undone, both a little anxious for that date.

He looks at James for a moment more in the dark. Something young flickering over him there, contemplative, taking a second. "I uh, I wanted to talk a little."

James's eyebrows furrowing, waking up a little more now, a sudden ice to the night, suddenly worried by the things he could say. Something about them, something about Kaka--

"Irina and I --" he gesticulates loosely with his hands, "We uh, we broke up." Cristiano's eyebrows raising as he looks away, as if he's surprised himself by saying it.

James is staring, mouth open.

Cristiano's looking out his passenger window at the city lights, "You know, maybe she wanted something more real in her life," a shrug. "Maybe so did I."

James wonders if the only way Cristiano knows how to be honest is with his head turned the other way, with a mouth to his back in bed, hands that only reach for his in the dark.

He doesn't know what he's meant to say. If he's meant to congratulate him, hug him, celebrate. What it means to Cristiano. If anything.

The honesty in the black of the rented car, the streetlights bathing Cristiano's profile, James's hand reaching for his.

***

Cristiano takes James's hand as they walk up to his bedroom, both their awards in his other hand, keeping their voices low so as not to wake Junior.

Slipping into his bedroom, locking the door behind them, the awards becoming afterthoughts on the floor by the bed, along with their shoes, their socks, expensive suit jackets. Stretching out, exhaling loudly, like they hadn't been breathing properly all night, had been holding something in.

James falls against the bed backwards and just lays there, arms outstretched, eyelids heavy. His shirt hanging open, revealing the muscles of his chest. He starts undoing his pants, slips a hand into his underwear.

Cristiano's been speaking animatedly on the phone to someone else, maybe their agent, maybe his manager, but pauses when he sees the movements of James's hand inside his pants, looks up at James's face for a second before looking back down again at that hand. Hums into the phone, in response to the caller and maybe to James.

The heat of his audience spurring him on, James sighs needily. Hard and aching for him, always aching for him.

Cristiano still talking, but his face is somber now, intent, focused on James's hand. He starts undoing his own belt, lets it drop to the floor. Licks his lips as he sighs at the caller, repeating something he'd told them earlier, distracted. James sighs too, all the tension of the night coiled tight into his pants.

Leaning forwards he keeps his eyes on Cristiano as he brushes his other hand along his pants. Cristiano flinches back, makes a 'wait' motion with his other hand quickly, taking James's hand in his to stop it from traveling any further.

Impatient, kissing the back of Cristiano's hand before leaning back down and taking it with him, bringing it down to the bulge in his pants, squeezing their hands together over his ache. He hums again more deeply, rocking his hips up into it. Wonders, briefly, if he could come with only this; Cristiano's hand on his, eyes dark as city streets watching him.

Cristiano presses his receiver to his shoulder as he uses his other hand to start undoing his own zip, pushing the material down to hang off his hips. Letting James see him like that, that he's straining through his underwear too.

James responds by rolling his hips up in a rhythm, letting out small sighs as he works Cristiano's hand over his cock. Cristiano's eyes dark, licking his lips.

When the other person on the end of the phone finally stops speaking, Cristiano tells them he has to go, that something's just come up, a cleared throat, it's two am and something's come up. The caller doesn't question it and Cristiano wishes them a goodnight, thanks them for the call, he'll see them soon, sends their family lots of love, as his other hand works at James through the material, watches as James bucks up for him, fucks up into his hand.

Cristiano fixated in the way James's eyes are lidded and his mouth is parted, the way James looks like he's almost in pain, like he's falling, drowning in something.

He tosses the phone onto the other side of the bed at the same time as he finally takes his hand away from him.

"You needed something, baby?" Voice low, dark, heavy as the look in his eyes. Smirking as he undoes the cuffs of his shirt, letting them drop to the floor.

James doesn't smile, only nods his head for a few seconds. Pants half off, shirt half off, erection straining through the top of his underwear, everything about him waiting for Cristiano.

He leans down to kiss him, meaning it to be brief, a stopping point, but James leans up into it and is so open and needy and soft like this that he gets lost in it. Trying to chase down what it is James wants; a connection, an emotion, meaning.

Before James's restless hands on his own crotch break him out of it, those hands then pulling him into bed with him.

Making love like that, like award winners, expensive suit wearers, dream walkers, hips chasing that connection, that feeling, hands entwining and unraveling and entwining and unraveling. James only coming when Cristiano's eyes are on his, something honest in them, something like a truth in his mouth as he kisses him through it.

James is giggling when Cristiano gets into bed after, a fit of giggles by himself, like a child. "What?"

He looks at him and then laughs more, head back, so hard he can barely breathe with it.

Cristiano amused, crawling under the covers with him, hand squeezing across his chest, "What?"

James is grinning when he looks at him, eyes wet with emotion, "My boyfriend."

Cristiano's eyebrows raise and he's looking back down. His life suddenly too intimate, sentimental, real. This beautiful boy laughing like he can't believe it.

He sighs and pulls a still giggling James towards him under his duvet, like he's dealing with an errant kid, presses his head into the nook of his neck, holds him there. I think I'm in love with you, he wants to say, but instead he presses his mouth to his forehead, says, "Yeah, your boyfriend," and it's almost enough.

*


	27. Chapter 27

*

  
With the buzz of a goal on him, James feels something in his boot during the Sevilla game, like a rock between his toes. Putting pressure on it and it's like something's pinched them real tight.

He's subbed off and a physio's there for him, hands on his feet, x-rays, an injury, a fracture. Two months off, maybe three. He'll miss two of the championship games, the next Atletico game, the next Clasico, and James doesn't realize he's crying until after, is so numb and feels so overwhelmed by helplessness that he doesn't even realize he's crying until someone hands him a tissue, squeezes his shoulder. His eyes wide, unblinking, tears down his face, so much like a bomb in his ears that the pain only really hits him later too.

And he's too numb to care, he fought for so hard to get here, to prove himself, and then there's this, and everything is a numb blur. There are phone calls from his family, his mother, his sister, missed calls from people he hasn't spoken to in years, the Colombian president tweeting about him, even his father's voice on the machine asking him how he is, if he's okay, as if the answer isn't obvious. Cristiano's sending him a text, "You're going to come back stronger than ever, let me know if you need anything x." Everyone acting like they care about him, and all he can think is that he fought so hard to be here, and that his season is almost over.

**

Cristiano's there for James after the operation, driving him back half lucid to his place, because it's his birthday the day after and he intends to celebrate it with him after they've defeated Atletico.

But he can't stay the night as he has to meet up with the team at the hotel, kissing him goodbye before he does, James all dreamy soft and heat sensitive on the painkillers. Cristiano's mouth a furnace, James living his life as a surrender to that heat.

Falling into a fever dream. Playing an endless game of football with stones in his shoes, his bandaged foot holding him down, and every time dream Cristiano touches him on the field some part of him burns away.

**

He'd watched the Atletico game from Cristiano's bedroom, almost changing the channel at half time.

A game Stephen King could've scripted. His own heart racing as though playing himself, stomach churning like he's spent the last two hours watching the people he loves being held hostage and tortured in front of him.

He sends Cristiano a text before the game even ends, 'You okay? xxx', and doesn't get a response after. He switches the TV off, the post game replays like footage of a natural disaster occurring somewhere.

An hour after the game the front door opens. James reaches for his crutches, hobbles out into the hallway upstairs, waits for him. Cristiano coming up the stairs, keys still in hand, glancing up at James. Jaw tense, eyes dark.

James opens his mouth a second wanting to say something, nothing coming out.

Cristiano approaches slowly. Keeping his head down, shaking it from side to side over and over, like he's disagreeing with something. When he reaches James he hesitates for a second and without looking up, reaches his arms around his waist, leans forward, smothers his face into James's shoulder. Takes a deep breath of him.

"Cariño," James is whispering, "baby," he says, "baby."

Cristiano takes another slow breath of him. Lifts him a little off the ground, presses him against the wall to keep the weight off his feet, needing him close. Holding him and being held by him. Feeling like it's the first time he's been able to catch his breath since the game ended.

James is whispering, baby, baby, baby, over and over again.

Cristiano lets the crutches fall, lifts him so that James's legs wrap around his waist, carries him into his bedroom, to his bed.

James flinches a little as he lowers him and Cristiano winces in turn. "I didn't hurt you, did I?" He's staring at the bandaged foot with concern as if it's a bomb liable to go off on James again. It's the first thing he's said in hours.

James is shaking his head, "Just sore." He takes Cristiano's hand in his, tugs on it until he gets into bed with him. He curls into James, lets him hold his forehead to his mouth, press in kisses. They don't talk about the game, Cristiano doesn't speak at all. Instead, James tells him how much he inspires him, how he wouldn't be playing if it weren't for players like him, how much he means to the team. Voice shaky, raw, fumbling through his stutter. Because he means every word, and he needs Cristiano to know that.

Cristiano's silent and still and needy. Eyes closed, face pressed into James's chest. Falling asleep together in their clothes, their shoes.

They wake up to a call from Cristiano's driver, telling them that he's downstairs waiting to take them to his birthday party.

James relays this to a groggy Cristiano. He's prepared to tell the driver to forget about it, to go home, that there isn't going to be a party, but Cristiano takes the phone from him, tells the driver they'll be down in 15 minutes. With a loud sigh, he gets up, doesn't say anything as he starts getting himself ready.

He has to be there, dozens of his family members have flown in from Portugal, most of them kids, they'd rescheduled it once already, and he can't not go. He can't let them down just because he lost a game. He can't force everyone else to feel the burden of his losses.

James had been helping him plan it, Cristiano asking for suggestions for cakes and decorations, had even flown in James's latest favorite reggaeton singer to come perform for them.

Both a little half asleep from the nap, from the game, James helping Cristiano pick out his outfit. Letting James fuss with his hair, his collar, the hem of his pants.

But James knows Cristiano's not feeling good about himself when he asks him three times on the way over there if he's sure he looks alright, if he looks okay, casting doubtful expressions at the rear view mirror when James tells him he looks incredible. Continuing to check his reflection all the way there, nothing James says settling him, like he doesn't trust the person it is James sees.

It's the first time James sees Cristiano drink more than a glass of champagne in a night, the first time he sees him get drunk.

Speaking too loud, too fast or too slow, everything a joke to him. His arm around everyone, joking about the Atletico game, laughing in a way that James knows means he doesn't think it's funny at all, jokes like ripped of band aids.

He gets up onstage to sing karaoke with the Colombian singer, moody love songs, and Khedira turns to him and says, "He really misses Irina, huh." James transfixed, painfully sober. Cristiano tries to get him to join him onstage, before remembering his foot, then grimacing and apologizing to him, to his foot, dedicating a love song to it. Everyone laughing, except James. Finding himself sitting up straighter whenever Cristiano makes a big motion, forgetting his own injury for a moment. Worried he's going to fall, feeling as though he's a drink away from collapsing or bursting into tears. Feeling like a lifeguard watching someone drown.

He'd been brittle, volatile, in the weeks leading up to his birthday. Snapping at reporters after their defeat in the Copa, getting a red card for lashing out in a game, irritable about the injury situation in the team. His manager had been unhappy with his break up with Irina, with him not having told him about it beforehand, and Cristiano had been feeling defiant, indulgent. Pinching James's ass before a game, pretending to loop his arm through his as they'd walked through airports together like James was another rebellion of his, a stress release valve.

After sex at night, he would rant about the situation, about reporters who were always looking to catch him out, about fans who were so quick to turn on him any game he didn't score. Naked, framed in the light from the doorway of his bathroom, ranting about injuries and why nobody else had been cursed with all the different injuries they'd had those past few weeks, that Michelangelo's David of his body thrown into vivid darknesses and lights, Caravaggio's brush strokes languishing on the muscles of his chest, on the shadows in his eyes. Punctuating each sentence with an angry hand gesture that made his cock bounce in the darkness in a way that distracted James, ranting about what sort of voodoo hex had been taken out on Modric because they really had to work on getting that lifted sometime soon, and James was struck by how he'd never imagined his life would be like this. Would never have imagined a naked Cristiano Ronaldo crawling into bed with him afterwards, how he'd fall asleep with his head on his chest, the way marble could feel blood real in your hands.

Cristiano finishes his song and takes an exaggerated bow, approaching their table. Eyes fixed on James, wearing a dreamy dangerous half smile. He's unsteady on his feet as he gets close, James reaching out a hand in case he falls, forgetting he still can't actually stand up to save him.

Cristiano takes the hand, spinning himself around under it, laughing loud, Marcelo and Fabio laughing watching, and James isn't.

Then Cristiano slumps an arm around him, takes a seat on his lap. He looks at him like that for a second with eyebrows and lips raised, amused at himself. His face so close to his that James can feel the burn of liquor on his breath. Eyes focusing entirely on James's mouth, licking his lips in a way that makes him feel hypnotized, time slurring to a stop. A look that forces James to avert his gaze so that Cristiano doesn't get what he wants, looking away too. His skin feeling exposed, like staring too long at the sun.

Cristiano reaches instead for another shot glass from the table, downing it with a grimace.

James pushes the glass away after, like he feels betrayed by it and not Cristiano.

Fabio's still joking about Cristiano with Marcelo, but Marcelo's no longer laughing, eyes more careful on him now, and James is also hyper-aware, hyper sober. Checking the room to see who notices, who else is paying attention. Trying not to move, touch him, as though everything might be a giveaway, a tell. Cristiano's laughing with Fabio, like it's nothing, and James is on edge, as if Cristiano is a joke away from saying or doing something dangerous.

Cristiano's hands across the table searching for another glass, inspecting the empty one, squinting into it, before frowning and standing up, declaring that his party is suffering from a criminal lack of alcohol.

James limited by his foot in only being able to watch him go, a man seeking a deeper well to drown in, Marcelo making excuses to get another drink and follow behind.

**

He takes a glass for himself and one for James. Remembers then, that James is on antibiotics and can't drink alcohol. Starts drinking his for him instead, the way he's sure James would want.

"What're you doing?" Marcelo's voice behind him, an ever present voice of sobriety.

"Enjoying my birthday." He tilts his head back, finishing the drink. Marcelo's staring at him in a way that makes Cristiano defensive, "You're not blaming me for the game, are you?"

Marcelo sighs, the way Cristiano was like this, an edge to him, the way he could be sometimes, upturned shards, wanting to prick you. He's holding his hands out, "I think the last time I saw you drink anything was after you lifted the Champions League trophy."

"It's my 30th birthday, Marcelo." That defensive voice, those edges of his, "And we just lost 4-0 in a derby. I'm trying to have fun at my party. That okay with you?"

Marcelo's offering his hands up again, but Cristiano's staring across the room now, distracted, the sound of laughter coming from their table.

James trying not to lose it as Fabio attempts to sing a karaoke song to him. James's eyes scrunched up, head thrown back, Fabio laughing through the words at him. James catching eyes with Cristiano during the song, sharing a grin, then a moment that spills out too long, swallowing edges whole. James having to turn his head away back to Fabio. Cristiano still staring, drunk, lost.

He turns to see Marcelo's eyes on him, eyebrows up to his hairline again and he exhales, "I need another drink."

Marcelo's hand on his arm, stopping him. "Jesus Christ, Cris." That disappointed sound of his sobriety.

"Shhhh," Cristiano's whispering back, as if Marcelo's said too much already.

Marcelo's eyebrows unrelenting, "He's a kid --"

"He's not, he's --" smirking then, bemused at the idea, at Marcelo chastising him like this.

Marcelo's halting voice, "Jesus Christ, Cris."

"What's wrong with James?" Sounding more petulant than he'd intended, deflecting.

"He's crazy about you," Marcelo's pointed whisper.

As if that were a flaw in a boyfriend of his, as if someone being crazy about him were a flaw.

And Cristiano knows what he means because it is, this was dangerous dating. He'd been safe before, dating people who were emotionally unavailable, people who didn't need him enough. And being loved too much was a flaw, like trying to balance a weight on a cliff's edge, a 4-0 goal loss to some part of himself. He knows that, he does.

A strained silence. Cristiano's voice controlled, hurt, "This is the part where you say, I'm happy for you both."

Marcelo's shaking his head at him, eyes wide with concern, "Jesus Christ, Cristiano. He's fucking crazy about you. Jesus Christ." Like he can't believe it, can't believe Cristiano's really doing this.

"I'm really happy for you both," Cristiano continues with that dry mocking voice, "I hope you're both really happy."

He takes another sip of his champagne now, defiant. He's going to drink tonight and he's going to have fun and he's going to fuck James, whether Marcelo likes it or not.

Marcelo's wide eyes on him, "He's a baby!"

A shit eating grin at that word, at that thought, "Maybe a little but trust me he's --"

Marcelo's eyebrows go up higher and his hand comes up as if he may have to hit him, "I don't want to hear a peep from you about your sex life together, ever. Not a word."

Cristiano can't help but smirk again at this, the way it feels like bragging to be able to speak about it at all.

"We're a lot alike if you think about it." As if trying to argue his case, soften him up.

Marcelo rolling his eyes, "He thinks you're wonderful, you think you're wonderful."

"You love James," a hurt voice, as if this were about Marcelo not liking James enough as a person.

Prompting Marcelo's forehead to furrow with the gravity of this accusation, placing a hand to his chest, over his heart, "I love James." A solemn vow, like he can't believe he has to state the facts of the case like this, "James is a sweetheart." A pointed accusatory finger, "The sweetest, okay? And you're not gonna -- you're not gonna fuck him about, okay?"

The alcohol making Cristiano laugh when he shouldn't, seeing Marcelo act this way, get so serious. How he knows James would probably love it if he knew that Marcelo would take his side against him like this, which makes Marcelo raise that finger higher in warning at him.

Cristiano defensive again, "I'm not gonna -- this isn't -- this is --" harder to speak now, because he's never said any of this out loud. It had become a private almost sacred out of reach part of him and he doesn't know what to say. Everything suddenly not enough, how to put words to so much, "It's -- you know, it's --" that shard of his voice now something cutting and pained, "It's mutual, okay?" Not smiling, eyes fluttering, something surfacing in them.

Marcelo staring at him, at this. Seeing that in him chipping away at his resolve, but still with concern, "Who else knows?"

"You," an exhale, "My mother. That's it."

Marcelo is still shaking his head, but his voice had softened, "This isn't gonna be like what happened before with Kaka."

Cristiano can't believe he'd bring him up like that. That bruise in his chest, the way time travel is possible sometimes when you close your eyes, hear a name. Grimacing, "Not unless you're thinking of having Ancelotti walk in on us."

Staring back across the room, the sound of laughter again. James dancing with one of Cristiano's younger cousins, a little girl in a blue sparkly dress. Spinning her around in his seat with his hand, clapping for her as she spins for him. That camera flash smile of his in the dark. Looking back at Marcelo who's caught looking too, wanting to say, what do you expect me to do in the face of that?

"We're careful, okay?" Cristiano's voice an open palm.

Marcelo puts a hand to him before he can turn away again, return back to their table, "Promise me you're not gonna -- promise me," a hand over his heart, a hand over Cristiano's, "You're not gonna hurt him, alright?"

A moment's pause. Cristiano's eyes evasive, head lowered, a surrender of something. How do you promise something you can't even promise yourself. What if the flaw in all of this is Cristiano, what if he's the one who turns hearts to bruises, laughter to edges. What if he's the one who should never be allowed to love too much, get too close, what if being loved by him is the flaw.

He leans in to press a kiss to his friend's cheek, "I love you, Marcelo."

**

Back at their tables, Cristiano reaches for his jacket on his seat behind James, swaying a little as he bends to get it. James there with an arm for him, solid, holding him up.

"I think Cinderella needs her pumpkin ride back home," Fabio's laughing.

Cristiano's helping James to stand up on his crutches, the hard to walk leading the hard to walk, proud when he manages to get James up and steady, when neither of them has toppled over.

James squeezes Cristiano's shoulder in thanks and in response Cristiano's hand dips behind to grab a handful of his ass, squeezing tight, but before James can experience seeing all of his life flash before his eyes Cristiano's declaring it's his bedtime.

In the car ride back home, he's loud and restless. He keeps his arm around James as he leans over to talk to their driver, asking him about his family back home, if he has any kids, singing bits and pieces of the songs he'd sung at the bar.

During a lull in conversation at a red light he turns to look at James, staring at him for a long moment. Seconds fixing like anchors, pulling James down, sinking under them; the slow heady way Cristiano's staring at his mouth.

"You know I love you, right?"

It's the only time he's been serious about anything all night.

James can see Cristiano's driver looking at them in the rearview mirror and he looks down, patting Cristiano on the arm.

Cristiano's head jerks up, remembering where they are. "I love you too, Miguel!" he says leaning across James to catch the driver's attention. Miguel turns to glance at them again, and he's laughing, and James is laughing too. Relieved.

Cristiano turns to look at James again when the car starts moving. Those heady half focused eyes studying him. He considers kissing James like this, debating it, that internal monologue playing out across his face. James taking in a breath, bracing himself, ready to say stop, push him away.

When Cristiano leans in, James doesn't do any of those things. His mouth parting, helpless.

And Cristiano presses his mouth to his forehead.

Then he exhales, turns to look back outside his window.

The rest of the way home he sings the same melancholy love song he'd sung at the bar, his arm still around him. A man lovesick, sick of love.

At night in bed, James is exhausted from the operation and meds and wants to sleep, but Cristiano's clingy, needy. He presses wet hungry kisses into James's neck, his back, his erection pressing hard up against him until James turns over to acknowledge him.

Cristiano kissing him the moment he does, desperate for contact, that liquid desire of him, tasting of toothpaste and champagne, sweetness and melancholy. The taste of morning afters, regrets.

James discovers Cristiano's the type of drunk who insists on going down on someone as though trying to prove something, atone for something. Keeps pulling away every time James is close. Until James's hands are in his hair holding him there, hips arched up high into his mouth, trying to get Cristiano to release him, fucking himself on his mouth until he comes.

Laying in bed together, Cristiano's hand at the back of James's neck, eyes on him. "You know I love you, right?" His eyes are wet, he looks sad. The way marble can feel blood real. How it feels like an apology.

And it hurts, a wound opening, salt pouring in, letting yourself bleed. James is nodding and Cristiano pulls his head to his chest, holding him like that until they fall asleep.

*


	28. Chapter 28

*

Worst than a hangover, the singer leaks videos of the party to his social networks, Cristiano's drunken singing after a 4-0 loss making all the Spanish media headlines.

On the drive in James is apologetic and Cristiano is quiet, tense, doesn't even put the radio or his stereo on.

When they enter the locker rooms Marcelo fixes Cristiano a look, hands on his hips as he approaches.

Cristiano hangs his head a little lower, waiting for the telling off.

"As if hearing you sing last night wasn't bad enough, now we all have to hear it over and over again on the news, huh?" Cristiano giving an apologetic grin, a small shrug, the way he could get when he knew he was in the wrong. Marcelo taking a playful swipe at Cristiano's offered head, a reproachful but soft expression. They were all upset about the game, they didn't need to make it any worst by taking it out on him or each other. "Though you keep telling me how much you love me when you get drunk and I might just start believing you."

Cristiano still with that guilty grin at Marcelo, a guilty shrug.

James staring, mouth dry, that wound from the night before throbbing. Wonders if that was just how Cristiano was when he was drunk, someone who started declaring his love to all his friends.

Marcelo casts a look over at James too, "But the next time we invite someone to a party, we gotta get them sign a whole bunch of NDA's first, okay?"

The whole week is like a long thundering hangover. Driving into training and seeing fans holding banners on the sidewalk for them, boos ringing out at the next game, James watching from the stands. A 2-0 win and it doesn't feel like enough for any of them. Cristiano doesn't score and he leaves as soon as he's dressed with Junior, not speaking to anyone.

James gets a distraction in the form of his family flying out to take care of him during his injury, and he tries not to take Cristiano's silence personally, tries to feel grown up and aloof by his absence, but finds himself checking his phone during meal times, casting wounded looks across the dressing room after physio sessions, wanting to apologize for having ever introduced Cristiano to the singer. As if the media storm wasn't bad enough, he couldn't take maybe feeling like Cristiano blamed him for it too.

Marcelo seems to sense there's something troubling him and after training he's there by James's locker, looking at him a little too long.

"Everything okay?"

James nodding, a polite smile, pulling his shirt on over his head.

"You shouldn't worry too much about the fans," Marcelo's expression was gentle, concerned, "They go hard on all of us at one time or another. We'll thrash our next team and they won't even remember there was a party." He continues hovering at his locker, staring at James, as if considering something. "But if you ever need someone to talk to, if anything's ever bothering you, you know I'm always here for you, right?"

James staring at him with wide eyes, nodding. Taking this to heart the way he did when anyone was just a little kind to him.

Marcelo still hovering like there's something bothering him too.

"I really mean that James. If you ever need anything -- like, a hug, a place to stay, bail money," an open grin. "If you're ever having any relationship problems," more words like italics, other words crammed into them, "Then you can talk to me about that too."

James only staring back with his wide innocent smile, seemingly oblivious to Marcelo's subtext.

He's sighing, "Sometimes Clarice and I fight --"

James's expression changing, brow furrowing, "You and Clarice fight?"

"Uhhh... I mean... sometimes... a little... I mean... you know what? Not really," Marcelo laughing, unable to even take the idea of them having a proper argument seriously, not even for the sake of this conversation, "But if we ever did, then you know I'd talk to you about it."

"You can count on me, Marcelo. Always." That wide eager smile back, flattered. As if James was thinking that's what this was, Marcelo wanting James to know that he could confide in him, that he trusted him.

James leaning to press a kiss to his cheek and running a hand through his hair, leaving him to go, the conversation not quite panning out the way Marcelo had hoped it would.

**

James is watching their next game against Elche from home when Cristiano scores his first goal in 2 weeks and he's only a little surprised when a couple of hours after the game there's a knock at his door and he's there, skin adrenaline flushed, expression a little bashful and apologetic.

"Pretty good game today, huh?" 

Cristiano's eyes pre-coital dark, "You think so?" Leaning in to end that week's distance with a kiss, pressing into him in his doorway, letting James sigh into him.

A kiss that makes James shy when they part and Cristiano cocky, inviting himself in.

Sprawling out against James's couch, muscles unwinding after the game, catching him up on the latest gossip from the team. James knows he's feeling better about himself when he makes jokes about what'd happened, "I'd probably throw a protest too, if I had to hear my singing." James giggling and leaning into him. Cristiano so warm and easy like this, sullen mood lifted, fog gone, an arm around him. A casual intimacy that James had craved, being able to turn to look at him, have him close, have him right there.

But it's dinner time and he has to get back home to feed Junior.

Stretching as he stands up, walking slowly towards his door to allow James and his limp to keep up.

A goodbye kiss that James drags out, his hand to Cristiano's neck.

James's family had flown back out to Colombia a few days before and the house behind him is layered in evening shadows and silences. The sounds of nothing but the hum of the TV on in his front room, kids playing in someone else's yard outside, a house that seems too big for James like this, making Cristiano feel as if he's abandoning a stray animal at a rescue center.

An exhale, "You know, my mom's cooking tonight and she always cooks too much," a pause, a shrug, "If you wanna come over?"

Those orphaned puppy eyes widening.

Cristiano tries not to let on he can see how much this offer means to James, but grins as he starts practically hopping back into his house, back up his stairs, telling Cristiano to give him five minutes, because there's no way he's going to have dinner with his mother dressed in his peejays.

**

Dolores had offered James an extra dessert at least twice now, but before taking the plate from the table she'd made sure to offer it to him one more time just in case. James giving her a sincere easy grin, a shake of the head, a pat of the belly. He really couldn't.

He'd changed into something a little more formal, a dark shirt with all the buttons done up, hair freshly combed before they'd left. Dolores had taken to him the way Cristiano had expected. James eager to hear about her day, about an ache she'd had in her back, inquiring about how she'd cooked the Pastel de Nata's -- "of course it has to be full fat creamy milk" -- James's eyes fixed on her, like he'd needed them fully open to properly understand the scope of her recipe.

She'd turned to look pointedly at Cristiano after James had politely asked her if he could leave the table before using the bathroom, and when he'd apologized when his phone had rung during the meal and had then turned it off without even checking to see who it was, and when he'd offered to say Grace first before the meal first.

"Next time your mother is here you'll have to invite her over," his mother's saying and James glances at Cristiano as though needing to clear the invite first. Cristiano's looking back at James and then his mother, eyes cautious.

James as a person was someone designed for you to take home to your mother, designed to be someone's favorite surrogate child. He could draw out the maternal instinct in stone hearted referees, let alone fussy mothers like his. And he'd known that long enough, had kept James away from her for maybe that reason.

"She doesn't get much time free in Colombia," James says, shy, staring at his empty plate, "She runs my children's charity back home."

His mother's smiling at this, impressed, a sharp look back at her son, "He has a children's charity and his mother runs it, of course you didn't tell me this before."

Cristiano's shrugging his shoulders, grinning, the way he'd almost been like a kid in trouble during the entire meal.

"He doesn't always bring his friends over," she says again, smiling at James before giving her son another look.

"They won't survive being over fed by you," Cristiano grins and his mother swats him over the head with a hand to the sounds of their laughter.

"Because you're a good boy I can tell," an affectionate little tug on James's cheeks as she reaches to take his plate too, telling James to sit when he tries to stand up to offer to take them for her.

"Are you saying my other friends aren't?"

Cristiano's giving her a cheeky grin and with her own playful smile she responds, "Some of your friends didn't deserve to meet me the first time."

Cristiano laughing as she leaves, and James is quiet, a little reserved there at the dinner table with his family, the overly polite guest.

"Is James having a sleep over tonight?" Junior pipes up.

Cristiano's eyes a little shy too as he looks back at him, clearing his throat as if he hadn't considered it, both bashful with their secret, "Do you need to call your mother to ask if you can stay over?"

A shared smirk in response.

***

Cristiano starts taking him back home with him after physio some days, cajoles him into it so that he doesn't feel like he's being pitied.

While he's doing photoshoots or taking business calls that seem to last all evening, James lounges around in Cristiano's garden wearing his CR7 cast offs, drinking virgin cocktails and taking photos of Cristiano's dogs by the pool in different lighting.

With an early training session and Junior still at school, Cristiano was trying to organize his next shoot with the Sacoor Brothers over the phone, looking out through his kitchen window at his yard, where James was sprawled out on a sun lounger in only his trunks, sunglasses and foot cast. Sipping on a fruity drink as if Cristiano's home had become an expensive hotel resort for him during his recovery.

Cristiano's eyes lingering on the expanse of golden skin and muscles on display as James took in the beginnings of the Spanish sun. Thinking about how nobody was home but the two of them, considering maybe putting his phonecall on hold for just a little longer. What the sweat on his skin would taste like, what it had tasted like earlier that day--

The sound of his doorbell jolting him from mentally undressing James any further.

He kept the phone to his ear as he opened it, surprised to see his sister Katia standing there with a quick kiss to his cheek and an apology, "I had my diamond earrings on when I was over here the other night and I can't find them, just let me go have a check for them?"

Brushing past him already, picking up and putting down couch cushions by his door, peering behind photo frames.

Cristiano follows behind as she passes through his house, her eyes scouring the tops and bottoms of cabinets and tables for any signs of it, when she frowns, hesitating in front of the glass windows overlooking his gardens, the football pitch, his pool.

He clears his throat when he sees what's caught her attention, "I could buy you another pair if you want --"

"Isn't that your team mate out there in his speedos?"

His eyebrows raising, gaze flicking over to James on the lounger, still laid out like some type of Lolita Disney Princess, then frowning back at her like he isn't sure, maybe.

"The one mom was telling me about?" A look. That look. "He's half your age."

Cristiano sighs, chastised, "He's 23."

"You're 30."

"Which isn't half my age." Trying to give her a look back, like he's won this.

His sister refuses to smile, holding that look on him instead. "Just hope it doesn't end up like that other team mate you fooled around with."

Enough to silence him. She pushes through his back door, Cristiano pouting at her.

She checks through the pool tables closest first, James sitting up and taking off his sunglasses on seeing her there, but she only gives him a quick glance before continuing her search. Hunting behind potted plants, wondering if maybe one of his dogs had found it, chewed it up somewhere.

"Have you seen a diamond earring?" she says without looking up at him.

James is grinning when she looks back, hand outstretched. "Hi, I'm James. It's nice to meet you." She looks at the hand before peering over him, underneath his lounger, eyes searching for anything glinting in the sunlight.

"Because I think I took it off when I was having a swim here the other day."

James is frowning, shaking his head, like he feels personally responsible for something he had nothing to do with.

With a sigh she turns her back on him and heads back into the house. Cristiano's standing at the doorway staring, waiting, eyes on her then darting back to James who'd gotten up to try and help with the search, following behind. He catches the last of her words before she passes through the other door, "Going to try checking upstairs, because your toy boy here hasn't seen it."

James hovering behind, as if guilty about something. He was always looking guilty about something.

"I really didn't see it."

Cristiano's eyes hesitant over him, "Don't worry, she's just a bit..." A shrug then, a grimace.

James's eyes still wide and eager, "I wanted to meet her."

Cristiano smirking, "She knows who you are."

Oh. Looking down, smiling, like maybe Cristiano talks about him with his family.

"She doesn't really approve."

Or maybe not.

Cristiano was walking back through his house, James following behind in only his speedos, limping with his cast.

He's smiling though, "'Cause I'm your toy boy?"

Cristiano blinking, trying to resist letting James have this. A sigh. "You know, you're my team mate and I mean a little, I guess..."

James is grinning, enjoying this, "I've never been someone's toy boy before."

Trying to feign annoyance, "I could drop you off home now, if you want."

James's eyes and smile were too bright, "Does that make you like my sugar daddy?"

Casting a pointed look over his shoulder. "Do you wanna be kicked out?"

James is giggling, arms encircling him from behind, skin smelling like the first traces of summer, like sun lotion and longing and heat, "You can't do that to your toy boy."

Cristiano laughing despite himself, and he doesn't push James away, doesn't kick him out.

**

Cristiano acts like these evenings over are for James's benefit -- "you have to get out of the house" -- but he knows that's not entirely true.

The team had become stagnant, Cristiano going from scoring hat tricks in every game to the entire team struggling to score one in some games.

Cristiano can be alone with himself if he's angry about a game, James has learned, but not if he's upset about anything else, not when he's feeling rejected by the fans, abandoned. With the team like this he's edgy and grouchy during the day, during rides to or from work, but at night he'll crawl into bed with him in silence, extra cautious with his foot, both of them feeling impotent. James a shell Cristiano presses his ear to, an ocean to wash away his frustrations with.

On some nights they don't talk about football at all, because they needed to not to be footballers some nights. Needed to be people who watched movies, played video games, sang out of tune songs, but only to each other. And they don't talk about Cristiano's drunken confession, James is good at pretending things don't have to mean what they mean.

He starts inviting him over some weekends when Junior isn't at school, and James finds himself inadvertently playing the role of Junior's biggest fan on the sidelines during father son football games, finds them giggling together conspiring with water guns against his cat on another.

He doesn't even complain when he returns from an away game and catches them tossing glitter bath bombs into one of his Jacuzzi's that'll leave them both shimmering a little too much in the sun for weeks afterwards. He pretends to be mad when his pool cleaner gives him a lecture about the glitter blocking the jets, but he can't help but smile in bed later when James is giggling picking out bits of glitter from his hair. They'd drawn away to Villarreal and it's been the first time Cristiano's had something to smile about all day. Having him there had become a distraction for both of them.

Whenever they'd been apart for a while, Cristiano would find himself the one whose mouth was thick with need, holding James down and doing all the work, an ego that wanted to be stroked, shown off. On some nights he didn't want to be the world's best footballer, but the world's best father to one child, the world's best lover to one man, for one night.

Even though they were a floor away from his mother's room James had been extra quiet knowing she was staying over, moving to cover Cristiano's mouth when he'd tried to tell James he was gonna fuck him till he couldn't feel the pain in his foot, letting James giggle like they were doing something naughty together.

"You never brought girls up when your mother was home?" a teasing glint in Cristiano's eyes.

"Like, to do homework together?"

"Homework...? Must've been a lot of disappointed girls walking home after doing maths all night with you," Cristiano laughing, James blushing.

"Did you take girls back to your place?" James's wide curious eyes.

A look, a little exhale, "I mostly brought them home so my mother could see them. I wanted her to think I was like, girl crazy," A smirk, James's soft eyes on him, "Hell, I wanted to think I was girl crazy."

James's hand on his waist, painting circles of warmth onto his skin under the duvet, "Did she always know?"

An exhale, a head shake, a frown.

"Does she know about us?" James nothing but wide open hands, warm gentle eyes.

"Not everything," a little grin, secretive, his own hand squeezing James's waist. "I tell her about some of the guys I date, not all of them."

Wide eyes like saucers, a voice like a held breath, "Like Kaka?"

That ice bomb of his name in his mouth. How he'd had to spend weeks picking the shrapnel of memories of them from his skin after seeing him again. Wonders about how obvious he is sometimes, if his skin's as translucent as James's often is.

His voice low, “You know he has a wife, a real one.”

James silent, staring at him, at this confession, not sure what to do with it. But like he wants to make it hurt, “Are you still in love with him?”

Cristiano thinking about this for a second, drifts away, doesn’t answer him, “When you’re young, it’s like the end of the world, you know? Like nothing will ever feel like that again... You ever had your heart broken before?” he asks suddenly, and James feels that dangerous feeling, of tripping, all those months of falling, and he looks away.

He’s had girlfriends before, women he was sure he’d never want to live without, but he’s never felt anything like this before and he doesn’t know if that makes them less real or makes this not real. He doesn’t trust anything about himself anymore, least of all his heart.

Cristiano's eyes on him and that feeling of drowning. “My heart breaks every day.”

Cristiano's finger brushes against his bottom lip, as if considering him, studying him for a moment longer before leaning in to kiss him, ending their conversation.

His kisses rich like sugar on the cane, the first sweet tastes of summer, laying in his arms and that feeling of falling, a mouth like shrapnel exploding deep inside his lungs.

**


	29. Chapter 29

 *

 After the 22 game winning streak the season ends on a whimper, all of them walking away empty handed, feeling frustrated, drained.

There's suitcases out and packed in Cristiano's bedroom. Plans to see family and friends over the summer organized. Goals to score and games to win in the Chilean Copa America. Cristiano's dropping James off at the airport and they won't see each other for almost 2 months.

There are other countries waiting for them to arrive as they dress, a lazy summer day stretching itself out between the windows of Madrid behind them.

In just his jeans Cristiano gets distracted by himself in the mirror, eyeing his hair in the reflection, frowning like he needs it cut for the third time that month.

And James is staring.

Cristiano grins a little, self conscious, when he doesn't look away. "What?"

There's the lines of his muscles in the sunlight, the way every part of him looks sculpted, hand crafted. James's mouth had been hungry over that reality of him the night before, memorizing him as if in a dream, how solid he was, how his body anchored everything in his life down. Cristiano and his thousand dollar hair trims and over priced ripped jeans, Cristiano and his smile that lights James up from the inside out.

"Nothing," James smiles then, shy. Then thinking, deciding, shrugging; giving himself up. "Just that I'm gonna miss you."

Cristiano looks at him for a second and inhales, shakes his head, goes back to checking his phone messages, but he's smiling a little too now, hides it. "We've gotta leave for your flight."

James ignores him and pulls on one of the shirts from Cristiano's own collection, a shirt Cristiano had once casually suggested might look good on him. As though talking to himself he sighs, "This is the part where you say, 'I'm going to miss you too, James.'"

Cristiano doesn't look up from his phone.

A moment's pause.

A moment too long.

"You know that already."

James frowns and goes to pick up his jeans.

James doesn't know if two drunken I love yous count for anything. If the words Cristiano sometimes whispers post-coital after a goal into his ear have any daylight currency. If Cristiano whispering "Eres el mejor" to him on the field during a game and then again later, after, when James had spent a half hour on his knees for him in the showers wanting to prove that to him, if they counted for something.

Cristiano changes the subject, "You want me to get you anything back from Portugal?" and James is shrugging, doesn't look up, exhaling loudly in a way that Cristiano's meant to hear. He's smirking as he puts his own shirt on, "You're mad at me?"

James keeps his head down. No longer smiling, pouting really. Shrugging again, like he doesn't know, doesn't care, which obviously means he cares a lot.

Cristiano sighs, but his smile is fond. He grabs at James's hand to pull him towards him, get his full attention.

"You like it when I call you baby though, don't you?"

Loving the warm pink flush that spreads across James's skin, that embarrassed surprised blink. Like he's being asked a question in bed, that trance way he gets where Cristiano could ask him anything, for any confession, and he'd tell him. If not with his mouth but with his eyes. Everything on the surface and his. James lowers his head shyly, and Cristiano can see his smile before he leans in, tucks himself into Cristiano's chest.

He inhales and runs a hand through James's hair, presses a kiss to the top of his head. James responding by hugging the way they kiss sometimes, competitive, clingy, hands tight enough to almost bruise, reducing the world to only each other. It's not that he loves him, he tells himself some nights when they're apart, it's that something about James aches at him, feels missing when he's not around.

Standing like that for a quiet moment, golden rays of morning breathing in through his windows, both of them warm and real in each other's arms. The other countries waiting on them can wait a little longer.

"We've gotta leave," he says again into his hair and lets James look up. His eyes are still glittery and raw, and Cristiano starts away again, moves to re-check his hair in the mirror, ground himself back into his other reality. Like it costs something for Cristiano to be like this, to have this for too long, a thing you can lose, have taken from you. A debt he knows will haunt him in the future.

James goes to pick up his bag, his jacket, watches Cristiano through the mirror as he does.

"You drive me crazy," he says in the same voice he uses at night to whisper secrets, confessions.

Cristiano flashes a grin at him through their reflection, "It's mutual." Then slings an arm around James's shoulder, stealing another kiss to the edge of his head.

He tells James his shirt looks even better on him than he'd thought it would and they leave like that together for the airport.  
*


	30. Chapter 30

*

In training sessions in Chile, James keeps his phone tucked into his waistband. Checks it during the day for messages from his family, Whatsapp jokes from his team mates in Spain, and texts he checks under the table during lunches, or only answers with his face turned away, voice so muffled into his hands that Cristiano has to ask him twice before he can make out what he's actually saying.

During a break in training, James has to double check nobody else is around him before he answers a call.

A low, amused voice, "What are you wearing?"

James laughing, voice hushed in case. "I'm in training."

"So... you're all hot and tanned and sweaty?" A contented sigh, "In your Captain's armband?"

Giggling, eyes scanning for anyone near him, joking. "Are we doing the whole phone sex thing right now?"

"I am if you are," Cristiano laughing this time.

James feels his skin burn in a way that has nothing to do with the sun or the exercise, "I'm at training, Cris."

A laugh and a dejected groan. "Show me."

Laughing, "Show you?"

"Take a photo."

"Of myself in training?"

Pausing, "I can get those online, give me a little something more..."

A silence that lets Cristiano know James is considering it, then his hushed voice, "I can't, there's people around, Cris..."

A long, deliberate sigh. Like a man who'd seen all his crops fail and had just been told there'd be another hard winter ahead.

"I thought it'd be kinda sexy, you know, seeing my boyfriend when I won't see him for another month..."

His cheeks hot, the word _boyfriend_ like a Pavlovian bell in his ears.

Cautious glances sideways. Squinting at the entrances to the changing rooms across the field.

He's meant to be quick. Just a dash into the empty stalls, a hasty photo and out. But he's distracted by his shyness. He deletes every selfie except one of his reflection in profile, half naked in only his knee high socks and cleats, his Colombian training jersey hovering over the curve of his ass, grinning at the camera, bashful, in a way that makes it less sexy but more honest, real.

Cristiano responds in okay signs and kiss emojis and James returns to training with that same self-conscious grin. Trying to hide it even more like it gave him away, till his cheeks get sore and his teammates tease him to pay more attention when he misses a pass.

***

That night in bed Cristiano's the last person he calls.

It's evening in Portugal, Cristiano's with his friends in his garden, asks James to give him a second so he can go up to his room for a moment.

"How was training?"

"A bit distracting," laughing.

"You in bed?" Cristiano sounding smug, enjoying the effect he could tell he was having even miles away.

James a little sleepy already, "Mmmhmm. It's eleven here."

"Wearing nothing?"

Laughing, Cristiano wasting no time. "Mmm-mm."

"Take a photo."

Hushed hesitation, that self conscious smile back. "You want me to take a photo of my dick right now?"

Cristiano surprising him, "No. A selfie."

Laughing like he's joking, "A selfie?"

Cristiano's voice deep and serious, "I wanna see you." A pause, James stalling, shy, till Cristiano repeats it again, "Wanna see you, baby."

He takes a selfie from above in bed, skin flushed, another knowing darkness in his eyes, smile.

Cristiano's in the zone, "Mmm, gonna fuck you so hard when you get back, you know that, right?"

James whimpers. Feeling the stress of the day unwind, thoughts drifting.

"You need that, baby?"

Another pained whimper, hand drifting down to where he needs him most.

"Tell me how badly you need that."

Voice tight, "Need you so bad."

"You think about me during the day?"

"Yeah."

"Think about us?"

A grin. "Yeah."

"Tell me."

A breath. "You remember -- in the showers, that time after the Club World Cup, and uh, you uh, you..."

"I sucked you off?"

Voice tight, throaty. "Mmm."

"On my knees making you come, you fantasize about that?"

A laugh. As if anyone wouldn't. "Yeah."

"I'm good at that, right?"

Another laugh, a tooth bitten grin, "Mmmm."

"Good at making you come, huh?"

A whimper, frustrated by the distance, his need.

Cristiano's voice like a hand on his skin, "You know, I thought about sucking you off when we first met."

James's voice instantly bright, alert, "In the, uh, on the training ground?"

"No," a low honest laugh, "Before, in Portugal. You came up to me at that restaurant."

James hands between his legs, Cristiano's words under his skin. "You -- you thought about that?"

Cristiano's voice sounding distant, dreamy. "You seemed so innocent, shy. Kept looking over at me. Wanted to suck it out of you."

A strained whimper. "You're making this up."

A cocky grin in that voice, "Is it getting you off?"

James groaning. "You're making this up."

Cristiano laughing, "Honestly, I'm serious. I thought about it. I did."

That whimper back, mind gone again. "I hate you."

Cristiano laughing for a second, then his voice slips back into something dreamy at the memory, low, "You wanna promise me something?"

A breath, "What?"

"Don't touch yourself till you see me."

An incredulous laugh like it's a joke, "What?"

"Promise me."

"Cris..."

"I won't either."

James stilled then, mind emptied by this, "You won't either?"

"Mm-mm. You gonna promise though?"

An inhale, his other hand drifting up onto his chest, letting his release fade. "Yeah."

Cristiano laughing softly, "You promise me."

James's voice sulky, playing up his frustration, "You're gonna kill me."

Laughing. Enjoying this. "Gonna be worth it, I promise."

A breath and James's hopeful voice, "Promise?"

"I promise."

***

Cristiano makes it hard on him.

Sends him selfies of himself after showers in the morning, water dripping down the v line promise of his pelvis, his groin, grinning, shameless. Shots of himself working out at the gym, the bulge in his underpants, "Got you this from Portugal" scrawled on top with a laughter emoji. Or when James knows Cristiano's really feeling himself, selfies of himself leaning back in one of his chairs, black and white with a filter. Eyes direct at the camera, naked, looking like some type of sullen Calvin Klein model, begging to be touched, disturbed, messed up.

When his team mates go out clubbing after games and James doesn't dance with any of the girls who clamor for his attention, they start teasing him about having a girlfriend back in Madrid and James laughs it off, lets them.

They work it up to mythical proportions whenever James ducks away from a woman's attention or a night out. "It's that Spanish Playboy model he's dating." "More like a Playboy magazine." "Is she sending you photos of her tits, is that why you keep checking your phone?" "She's gotta be good in bed, you're not getting any here because she wore you out back home." Laughing at James's ever deepening blush.

At night they talk on the phone. Voices streaming back and forth thousands of miles, stories about their days spoken in soft daydreamy whispers, till one of them breaks and gives into saying, "If you were here right now, what would you do..."

An unresolved unfulfilled phone sex they drag out through five long weeks.

Giggling one night talking about each other's first times.

"I was convinced she'd get pregnant. I made her take all these tests." Both of them laughing at that image of young James, frantic, surrounded by home pregnancy tests.

Cristiano sighing and having to think when it came to him, which story to tell. "It hurt."

James's voice higher, "Hurt?"

"He didn't tell me he was going to -- he just did it, and I didn't know what it'd be like, you know?"

James silent, stewing, lost, "He hurt you?" Wonders who.

"I survived," a laugh at James's concerned voice, "But it wasn't, y'know, the best sex I've ever had."

"Is that why you -- why --"

Cristiano taking a breath, "-- depends on the mood. If a guy wants it. If I trust him."

James quiet, all in his head. They don't talk about it again, James spending the day at training wondering what that was like, wishing he'd been Cristiano's first anything. Wishing he'd been his second and done it right for him, wishing he'd been the one to make Cristiano feel like it didn't have to hurt, didn't have to feel bad. The way Cristiano had been with him.

Cristiano never says I miss you. Instead, he texts James photos of his dogs and says "they're losing weight now you're not here to sneak them any food." Leaves a voice mail of himself out clubbing at night with his friends drunkenly singing along to one of James's favorite songs. Sends James a photo of a stack of Adidas shirts and Bronzini underpants he'd found in his laundry basket one morning, "Either you come and get them or I'm selling these on Ebay."

They start up a fantasy of when they'll see each other again, replayed out in different ways each night. Sometimes they fuck in an elevator the moment they see each other, keeping all the buttons pressed between floors to see how long they can get away with. "You're gonna last, like, 3 floors," Cristiano laughing, James not refuting it. Other times it's in a limousine back to his place with the curtains drawn and the windows open, letting the air in and their voices out. After losing a Colombian game, when James's voice is restless and in need of a distraction, Cristiano talks about how it'll last all night. All morning. They'll order room service, refuse to take calls, leave love bites on open skin at the top of each other's throats, or as scrawled secrets in the curve of each other's backs, asses.

Falling asleep on the phone, James's hand stretched out next to him, the sound of another person's heartbeat in his ear.

**


	31. Chapter 31

**

Vacation over, James flies out to attend Mendes's wedding in Porto, a city that had once felt like home to him, still does on some homesick nights.

The reception is on a private estate under white erected tents decorated in walls of roses and lilacs, the last of the summer sun pouring through. Cristiano's there as Mendes's best man, dressed like he needs one of his black and white moody Instagram filters, like he's just stepped out of a GQ spread.

There's people they both know everywhere and they can only trade brief cheek kisses and a hug where Cristiano's hand lingers for an agonizing second on James's ass, before he's being pulled into conversations with half of Mendes's family, friends of friends who want to catch his ear for a bit, take a selfie.

He gets caught in talking to his manager and investor about his new hotel deal for a bit and James is across the room, cornered at a table by a dark haired girl in a tight short dress. Cristiano pretends not to be distracted, but she's leaning into him, their heads close together, their laughter a headache.

James checks his phone, a message from Cristiano: "Getting cozy?"

He can't see Cristiano from where he's sat, but texts back: "U jealous?"

The girl watches James with expectant eyes and he's distracted, has to ask her again what her question was. Takes a sip from his beer, undoes a button at the top of his shirt.

A message again: "I can tell her how your dick tastes if that's what she wants to know, baby."

He's grinning at his phone, glancing at the girl who eagerly meets his smile, and he looks back down, types out a response: "How does it taste."

She's touching his knee, trying to get his attention and James wonders if Cristiano can see.

A minute's response: "Tell her it probably still tastes like me."

James swallows, keeps his gaze down, that six-week ache in his pants throbbing, lip twitching. He loved when Cristiano was cocky, possessive.

He types out another response.

"So you want me to tell her how sweet it tastes?"

He looks up across the room and catches Cristiano now having moved closer, standing at a table across from him staring at his phone before looking up to catch his eyes. The room thrums inside him like the entire universe has conspired for these moments in his life, where nothing is real except Cristiano's eyes, his smile, the way everything inside him aches when he never looks away.

***

"Got you this." Cristiano approaching their table, beer bottle in hand.

He gives the girl, Luciana, a Colombian friend of a friend of his, a kiss to each cheek in greeting and she runs a hand through her hair after, flustered in a way James was used to seeing women get around him.

"You're from Colombia too?" He says at her accent, "Here for work?"

"Doing a little bit of modeling in Spain." She gives a shy self-conscious glance at James.

Cristiano raises his eyebrows as he raises his glass, "To Colombia, a beautiful country with beautiful people."

She blushes and giggles and James keeps his eyes down, away from the look Cristiano is giving him.

They make polite conversation together about the wedding, about the food, about football. James and Cristiano trading looks as they talk, making excuses to touch, sharing subtle smiles, teasing each other, how much they can get away with. James takes a long sip of the beer Cristiano brought him, head back, drawing out a satisfied sound, "Mmm, this tastes good, really sweet, could drink it all day." Eyes on Cristiano's, not hiding anything, greedy, wanting him so bad he didn't care if anyone noticed. Knew that they wouldn't, wouldn't get it, would never understand the burn of Cristiano's eyes on his skin.

James knows Luciana thinks she's in. She's been introduced to Cristiano, they've been talking for almost an hour already, this is a thing, this is going to be something.

Jorge's daughter Marisa pulls Cristiano into a dance and people turn to look, the glamor of both of them together, her chiffon dress in flight, Cristiano like some kind of Prince out of a children's fairytale, laughing at himself.

He waits for their eyes to catch as he spins her, for the look he knows Cristiano will give him, eyes warm with promise.

This is how it is, how they satisfy themselves, being with each other but not, drawing out the almosts, until it's late and they have to get to sleep for their flight back to Madrid tomorrow. James gives Luciana the number of his manager to be polite, both heading out together, taking an elevator back to Cristiano's suite. There's other people in there with them, so they don't speak, just their arms touching, grazing, Cristiano's hand lingering down James's back as he leads him to their room.

***

James feels wound up all tight like before a big game when they're inside his room. A Bridal Suite, an open window with soft billowing curtains letting the fresh sea breeze in, roses in vases along the walls, a four poster bed with virgin white sheets, champagne in a bucket by the bed.

He watches Cristiano take off his jacket, thousands of dollars worth of clothing falling to the floor as an afterthought, turning to him as he starts unbuttoning the top of his shirt, a self-satisfied smile as he lets James take him in.

"Miss me?" muscles of his stomach out, eyebrow up.

James is dizzy, a man starved for 6 weeks staring at a feast.

A moment's pause and Cristiano's staring at him in the silence, eyes vulnerable now, as if maybe James hasn't.

James's head is lowered as he approaches him, sacrificial, hands hungry, searching for the skin under his shirt, that thick hit of cologne inside him, wanting to feel him everywhere already.

The first time is by the windows of their hotel room, Cristiano on his knees for James with a bloodred sun falling behind them, smirking as he takes him into his mouth. James with only his zipper undone, those hungry hands in Cristiano's hair, tugging his lips closer to his will. Cristiano grinning at his growls and groans for more, knowing James has kept to his promise because he barely lasts two minutes, unraveling with a gasp inside his mouth.

And James knows Cristiano's into this, that he's missed him too because his new haircut's already a mess and he doesn't check his reflection even once.

The second is after mouthfuls of strawberries and champagne in bed. James's eyes on him as he flicks his tongue out at an offered strawberry, the taste of it in both their mouths. James giggling as it pours down his chin between kisses, everything about him sweetsweet. Cristiano tries to pretend to have a conversation with him about what it's gonna be like getting back to Madrid that next day, back to training, about the new season, as he slides two lubed up fingers inside him. James playing defiant, resisting, trying to ask him about who their first game is gonna be with, their new kit, till his hands are clinging to Cristiano's wrist and he's arching up into him, talking only in gasps and breaths. Cristiano laughs into his throat and James whines like they're on another long distance phonecall, that desperate edge of him out, Cristiano too close and still too far away. Cristiano's no better, flipping James over and having to press his mouth into his back, how tight he is and how much he needs this aching up into him. He gives into his own release within minutes inside him, laughing at himself into the back of James's neck, feeling like a desperate horny teenager again.

The third is post coital, talking in kisses, James still wound up too tight inside his head and inside his guts, the way his desire sticks inside his throat, craves touch, turning something intangible into something on the tongue. His mouth all over Cristiano again, his neck, his chest, teeth scratching nipples, between Cristiano's thighs with a grin. Leaving love bites and love letters over Cristiano's groin, written in James's smile and sparkling eyes as he takes Cristiano into his throat, a prayer of his mouth around him.

He watches James get off to it, his hands between his own thighs as he takes Cristiano in, like this was his six week fantasy, owning him like this again.

He's brave with Cristiano so surrendered like this, slips a finger between Cristiano's thighs, along his perineum, poking it inside him as he sucks him in.

Cristiano's head jerking up, eyes startling back to him, hand in James's hair pausing, considering. He's pressing up against his spot, some part of him long untouched, warming, waking.

He shuts his eyes with his head back on his pillow, letting James take control. Giving himself up to him, letting go.

**

"So is this where brides lose their virginity?" James with an eyebrow raised, a smile in his eyes. The way he could play so innocent you'd almost believe him.

On the floor are a few grand worth of wrinkled designer suits, barely worn, slipped out of so that a hundred million worth of footballers could entangle themselves together in bed.

Cristiano's pouring another glass of champagne for them to share. "I don't think you count, James."

James's bright eager grin, butter not melting, the way he loved being teased, "God knows my heart." He stretches his arms out above him, sprawled out on their four poster bed like a decadent prince, a partial toga of Egyptian cotton teasing his nudity.

Cristiano tosses him another strawberry and James catches it with his mouth. He crawls back into bed next to him, a grin as his hand reaches between James's thighs, possessive, territorial, "God also knows I've spent the last hour fucking you."

"If you were a bride you'd have to wear all black," James bright and giggling under him, "They wouldn't let you in the church."

His fingers trace around James's laughing mouth. Lips pink with strawberries, pink from kissing him.

"My dick was in there ten minutes ago," cheeks bright pink, laughter sunblushed, eyelashes fluttering shut as Cristiano looks down at him, still so easily shy, "And up that ass."

"Will you stop," James's finger covers Cristiano's mouth as if trying to seal his words in. Cristiano flicks his tongue out to meet it and James scrunches his eyes up like being tickled.

"You've sucked me off at an awards show. I've fingered you in the showers after a game."

"Shh," fingers pressing at those words, giggling.

"Shh? You think God is listening now but was ignoring all those texts you sent me before? Couldn't hear all the things you were telling me in Chile? Didn't see what you did with that finger ten minutes ago?" A laugh and a look as dark as a mouthful of alcohol, "Your dick still tastes like me, James."

James's skin is as red as his lips, and he's rolling his eyes, trying to hide his grin, "You're so romantic."

Cristiano moves to cover James's whole body with his, hands either side of his face, knee pressing between his thighs, opening him up for him. Looks him in the eyes, demanding his full attention, expression serious, voice serious, "I am very romantic."

James's tooth bitten grin is so fond and young Cristiano wants to press back into it.

"The way I suck your dick is very romantic."

Kissing his bright giggling James, his strawberry fingers and strawberry lips, the last taste of summer still in their mouths.

The fourth time is with the night breaking across Portugal from their window, the city awash in lazy water color tones. Making love again with the view like that beneath them, watching the city as it watches them.

**


	32. Chapter 32

***

The summer had brought changes, farewells to Casillas and Ancelotti, leaders to the team. James learning fast that Real Madrid spared nobody. Lose a few games and it was your head on the block.

Ancelotti had been like a father to them and Benitez was immediately the substitute teacher they wanted to rebel against, the step father they didn't trust. He didn't laugh at any of their jokes, wouldn't look them in the eye as he gave them instructions, and offered no affection when they did well.

After their first training session where Cristiano had failed to score any of his free kicks James had watched as Benitez had even taken Cristiano to one side and started lecturing him on his technique, giving him instructions as though Cristiano was new to the game, had never taken any before.

James watching this rapt, Cristiano's expression like vinegar, before glancing at James as he listened to him, in disbelief at Benitez's audacity.

"That how you scored all your free kicks when you played for Real Madrid?" Cristiano had said after he'd finished, with a straight face but eyes so severe they made James stand up straighter.

Benitez didn't acknowledge the comment and gave another nod to the goalposts as if to say keep practicing and started walking back inside.

Cristiano shivering behind like they'd had the Arctic breeze go through them, James giggling. Benitez turning at the sound of laughter and James covered his hand with his mouth, coughed into it, before he continued on inside. Turning to share another grin together behind his back.

James scores two golazos in his next game and first start of the season and in the locker rooms after they're both a little giddy. They'd been eyeing each other up over the field, inside the locker room. Little glances and checks around them, planning this. Waiting for the others to leave. Excuses so they'd be left like this. Two men staring at each other across an empty room, the distant sounds of people filtering through the stadium overhead, the room full of a burdened silence, expectation.

Still flirting, pretending it's inadvertent, as though being alone together was something they'd never thought about, James with his lashes down, slowly folding up his kit. In just his underpants and flushed skin, waiting.

He's giggling when Cristiano's behind him, hands to his hips, breath hot on his back, how long he's ached for him throughout the locker room, throughout the game. James's victory in Cristiano being the first one to make a move. Cristiano's victory in having watched James as they'd all changed, the way James had known his eyes were on him, how distracted he could tell he was by it, how James could act as though the only person he ever cared could see him was him.

He's pressing kisses into James's neck, a hand cupped around the tightness in his underpants. Giggling turning into sighs, his back arching into him.

"A nice freekick you scored. Benitez been giving you lessons behind my back?" In an imitation of Rafa's humorless voice, making James giggle again.

Pressing up against his back till James is against his locker door, an animal in surrender, offering his neck for more of Cristiano's mouth.

"Maybe a few more lessons under me and we can improve that technique, hmm," mocking Benitez's words from before, hand massaging him through his pants, James nothing but breaths and desire against him.

"This is unacceptable," Benitez's booming voice, a sound that strips wallpaper, silencing everything. "Unacceptable."

James doesn't even turn to look, reaching instead for his pants to pull on, for something to cover any of this up, keeping his back turned.

Cristiano's already ten steps away stuttering through an explanation, voice tight with forced humor, "We're just goofing around -- this isn't what it looks like -- none of this is what -- we heard you about to walk in, thought we'd play a prank -- I was just messing about, everyone teases him, it's not -- this isn't-- we're just joking around--"

And Benitez is out the door, eyes so severe on him they'd turned the hair on his skin up, feeling his life roaring through his ears.

Cristiano's white, solemn, shaking in the way he gets when he's too angry or emotional to speak. He doesn't look at James, doesn't say anything and pulling on a sweater he's out the door and following behind their coach.

James pulls on his own clothes too, throws everything into his bag without looking, tears fogging his eyes. He's fucked up. Everything's fucked up. Everyone's gonna hear about this. His team mates, Perez, the media --

There's nobody outside when he leaves and he finds himself keeping his head lowered as he makes his way out in case, feeling as if everything that's happened is visible over every inch of his skin. The back of his neck still raw from Cristiano's mouth, his skin still pricking with goose pimples at Benitez's voice.

He sits in his car and waits for ten, fifteen minutes. Doesn't see either Cristiano or Benitez leave.

Checks his phone at every traffic stop. The adrenaline turning his life into something achingly real, like being thrust up above water suddenly, unearthed into bright glaring sunlight.

He sends Cristiano a message when he gets home, "Everything okay? x" Too scared to call him in case he's still at the Bernabeu, still working his way through explanations, in case anyone else could see his name on his screen.

Spends the evening with his nerves on end. Each notification from his friends and family making him flinch, paranoid about everything, every news headline feeling personal, every noise outside calling his name.

Till night creeps in and there's an exhale down his gut when he finally sees Cristiano's name flash up.

"Don't even look at me in training tomorrow, okay? x"

An inhale like a fist in his lungs, the night spent tossing and turning, his life unearthed into something nightmare real.

**


	33. Chapter 33

***

James doesn't need to be told not to look at him because he can't.   
  
Cristiano's always been a raging sunlight in his life but that morning it's all harsh, a headache, a sunburn.  
  
Benitez doesn't talk to him during training or after. Doesn't even look at him. But he hadn't done before that either, really, not once since he'd arrived. James decides he likes it this way. Prefers it to the alternative in having to say a word to him about what he'd seen, explain them without stumbling, voicing anything about Cristiano out loud to him. Those greasy beady eyes on them, it was like thievery that he knew anything about them at all.  
  
His head stays down all morning when the trainers and physios speak to him, going over which muscles he has to work on, relax, in case there's anything in it, in case there's a whisper in the backroom about them. But nobody says anything to him about it. Nobody looks at him differently, looks at him twice.  
  
And Cristiano betrays nothing. Tough lipped, overcast eyes, and maybe the others don't know, maybe Benitez didn't tell anyone, but the only one he wants to talk to, whose attention he craves, won't even look his way, not even after he assists a goal to him in training, watches as he celebrates it with Casemiro instead. A resentful pang seeing them laughing together. Distracted, he blows an easy chance at scoring his own goal a minute later and there's Marcelo's bright warm smile in his face, "You okay? You've been looking like you've left an oven on at home all morning."

James startling, as though Marcelo had asked him something personal. Snapping out of it, shaking his head and laughing at himself, trying to get his head back into training, but like a reflex, instinctively looking up to see if Cristiano had noticed them talking together. Trying not to feel anything when he hadn't, when he's still caught up in laughing with Pepe and Casemiro, like nothing bothers him, like James had gone back to being nothing more than background dressing in his life, and maybe he always had been. Or maybe, maybe it meant things were okay, maybe it meant nothing was as serious as James thought it was. 

Later in the locker rooms everyone's talking, gossiping, getting dressed, and James keeps catching himself staring.

The long broad shape of his shoulders as he gets dressed, the narrow dip of his waist, brief glimpses at the few inches of his skin that were white, untanned, untouched by the world outside. Corners of the world James had had pressed against his mouth only days before.  
  
Benitez isn't there, and James has that fatalism, that inability to stay away from a flame.

Cristiano keeps his head down and focused on buttoning his shirt when James is there next to him, doesn't acknowledge him. The moment drawing out into something awkward, noise all around except for a static gulf between them. James wants to reach for him but doesn't, isn't brave enough, lowers his voice instead. "Can we talk?"  
  
Cristiano doesn't look up. A beat, then his head shakes from side to side.  
  
Feeling his voice a little tight. "After work."  
  
Cristiano lowers his head and keeps shaking it, nonono. Like talking to a house with the lights off, the shutters drawn.   
  
When he picks up his bag and turns to leave James's hand goes to reach for him, not to stop him but for contact, helplessly reaching for a lifeline, for something solid and real to keep hold of, but Cristiano's gone already, too fast, doesn't look back.  
  
He's standing there uselessly when there's a hand through his hair, Marcelo's smile in his face again, "Earth to James. You've had your head in the clouds all day. How many ovens did you leave on back home?"  
  
There's a burn in his eyes and throat. Cristiano hates him. He's ruined this he knows, Benitez might not have punished them but he's fucked everything up, ruined everything.   
  
"All of them," he says and picks up his own bag, doesn't look back at Marcelo as he shrugs away from his hand, sulks out of the locker rooms.

***

There's only a short window of time before the world could catch up to them and Cristiano's still there by his car when he reaches him.

And he hates it when Cristiano looks up and flinches on seeing him, eyes scanning around and behind him for someone else, before lowering his head. Just Vazquez and Kroos getting into their cars, nobody noticing them. But there's that window where he doesn't open his car door, stalls. A brief second where James lowers his voice.

"What did he say?"

James the bravest of them both sometimes.

Cristiano's eyes down, jaw stiff, "Nothing."

"What do you mean --"

"He won't say anything. He's not gonna tell anyone anything." Adding on like he feels he has to, "I told him it was a joke." A frown. "He said it wasn't his sense of humor."

The way his voice feels like it's drowning, "He won't tell Perez?"

A bitter smile then, quiet pause, an ice in there that James can't read, restrained. Shakes his head. "If Benitez gets the wrong idea..." stops himself, shakes his head out of it. "It's all a big joke and that's all he's gotta know, okay?"

James's throat is sticky, thick. "So we won't -- I won't -- like -- talk to each other in training --  until -- um -- or --"

"Aren't you due in America tonight?" Brusque.

With his Colombian teammates for friendlies. He's got a plane to make in an hour. They'd talked about it days ago, about meeting up beforehand, escaping away together before he'd left, promises made lifetimes ago.

"I can call you when we get there and we can --"

"Probably good idea for us to clear our heads for a bit." Cristiano's still shaking his head, voice a distant phoneline already. A throwaway, a warning line, "There's our careers to think about here."

A chill in the summer air, a burn in the backs of his eyes, "What does that mean?"

"None of this is easy for me, okay." Something hardened in his eyes, bitter.

"Everything you do is so easy --"

Cristiano's head snapping, voice betraying more now, a quiet anger, "I've been dealing with this my whole life, separating this my whole life. I'm not a fucking tourist here, James. I can't start dating women again whenever I want, I can't pretend to get married to some girl for 30 years living a lie. I can't be one of those guys, okay?" Cristiano's eyes finally on him, wide and wet and sunburn real, "This isn't a joke to me."

Ice in his veins and heart, "If I wanted it to be easy I could go out and date some model --"

"Then go out and date one," head jerking up; eyes severe, searing. "You should, really. Want me to call up some of Irina's friends?" Voice business like, detached, like he was speaking to him from a distance, like he'd long expected it, rehearsed this conversation, given it to others before, "You can still have that, I won't stand in your way."

But he was. Cristiano was the only direction he'd come to know, that sunlight he couldn't look away from, felt like he'd spent his whole life chasing. But at what cost. At what loss.

Cristiano was flicking through his phone for numbers, "What's your type, blondes, brunettes?"

James shaking his head, grimacing, salt in his mouth, eyes. The voice inside him tight, frozen, mute.

There's other people talking, other people heading to their cars.

Cristiano's lips tight, everything about him so careful, boarded up, "Don't let me be the one to hold you back, okay."

He watches as Cristiano tosses his bag inside his car, pulls down his sunglasses, starts the engine. Watches his car pulls out from the spot, disappear around the gates.

His life a distant phoneline, frozen, boarded up, too far away to touch, too close to feel unreal.

***


	34. Chapter 34

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ..... 'member me? of course you do. we've been through a lot. you'd never forget about me, would you. nope, never. we're in this ship till the end, mkay?

***

It's a relief to get to New York, get back together with his Colombian teammates. Madrid feeling too small, the walls of them pressing in, like something trapped, sinking. 

A chance to get out of his own head and paranoia, an escape back to himself.

His teammates joke about his secret Spanish girlfriend, but this time James isn't stealing glances at his phone or sneaking away for phonecalls. Instead, he falls asleep to the sound of Latin American programming, the sound of nothing but the beating of his own heart in his ears, a claustrophobia.

There's bad news, and then there's worst. He's taken off the Peru game with an injury, a knock to his knee. Just a precaution as his coach gives him a hug, his trainers rub his shoulders. Just a precaution as they give his thigh a scan the next morning, a bruise lighting up his skin. 

An injury, ruptured muscles, two months off. A punch to the gut, a knife to his chest, like getting an x-ray and finding nothing but salt under his wounds.

Inside the physio rooms in Madrid like on a slow torture rack, James can hear the sounds of his teammates playing outside. Cristiano's voice always the loudest, or maybe it's just that it's the one voice he can hear anywhere, often thinks he does.

Marcelo and Pepe come in to give his shoulders a rub, offer him reassurance, tell him about the latest team gossip, whisper impersonations of Benitez that make him laugh.

And the one who doesn't speak to him, doesn't put an arm around him, doesn't dare meet his eyes is the one person whose absence James feels as big as the bruise on his thigh. 

Weeks pass behind those walls, watching his team play and win or his team play and lose, and all without him, and there’s nothing from Cristiano anymore. Time dripping by slowly on that treatment table, like life diluted, a pool of water draining each day, that silence of his absence a burden. The silence a weight that he carries around, everything muted by it, by its presence; his absence. 

It's like he's been and exited rehab in that silence, has weaned himself off caffeine, nicotine, morphine. Woken up the first time sober in months, years. Never been this sober, this aware of himself. Mornings are too bright and nights are too dark and he thinks it’s strange how he's never noticed before. 

Six weeks into rehab and with weeks left to go but finally nearing his first training session with the team again, and after, in the showers in the locker rooms Benitez is there having a word with Ramos.

James still like some type of jittery night thief around him, convinced his pockets are weighed down by stolen goods, eyes down, not talking to anyone. Just being in the same room as him and Cristiano at the same time made James feel like a scolded child, keeping quiet to evade them both, punished. 

Marcelo swats the back of his head to tell him goodbye and turning back to his locker there's Cristiano. 

Staring at him.

James drops his gaze, fixing it at his already empty locker. Good to clear their heads and now all of James's head is nothing but fog.

"It's not serious, is it?" It's the first thing he's said to him in weeks.

He feels panicked. Benitez's voice behind them, the heat of Cristiano's presence near him. Everything about them like a weight inside him, an albatross around his neck, a dawbell on his tongue. He's shaking his head.

"You'll come back stronger, I know it."

A hand on his shoulder, a squeeze, then he's gone and James is left staring at his empty locker, mind blank, shoulder warm, head like ice.

"So serious, mon amis."

Another hand on his shoulder, a cooler one, a heavier accent in his ear, a French one.

"Nothing is ever so serious. Two more weeks and you'll be back with us and will score three goals in one game, eh?" James blinks at him, forcing a smile. Benzema's pulling on his jacket, giving him a look. "What are you doing tonight?"

James sighs, he's pretty sure he has a date with reliving every awkward conversation he's ever had with Cristiano until he falls asleep. The same way he has done the last six weeks.

"Besides pouting." Benzema knocks his hand against James's mouth.

James juts out his bottom lip even more. But there's a smile tugging at the corners now and Benzema grins at him.

"You see, a friend of mine is throwing a little party, and you are the guest of honor tonight, mon amis."

***

Arriving with a cab at the address and there are people lining up across the street outside, girls in dresses that are barely bikinis, and Benzema isn't lying when he says it's his friend's party, but he hadn't mentioned that his friend happens to be the owner of the biggest nightclub in Madrid, Opium. 

The security guard slips them ahead front of everyone else and they're pulled into a bear hug by another well suited dressed man inside, the owner, who James would've assumed must've been a good friend of Benzema's if he wasn't acting as though he'd known James all his life too. 

In the VIP area Benzema is the star attraction, he knows everyone, the bar tenders, the go go dancers, every waitress. Everything is free and everybody notices them. James hasn't really been out partying since the summer of the World Cup and he forgets sometimes that he's a celebrity, that being a celebrity can be fun, watches as Benzema creates a small scene by waving at a girl across the bar. 

Ordering drinks, he whispers into James's ears about the ones he likes, his eyes on them until they notice, winks at him about the girls who look his own way and James is shy, reluctant, but Benzema's proud to have him there, show him off. His friend scored six goals in a World Cup, did they know that? He was voted Latin People's Sexiest Man Alive -- quick, look it up on your phone, that's him, that's his face, those are his abs, nudging James, making him blush for them.

But dancing into the heat of the night he lets himself get into it, forget. There's no time for conversation and regret, just music and alcohol and teasing each other about women and bad dancing.

A haze of rhythmic bass in his ears and warm liquor down his throat. The night like a warm blanket on him. Nothing in life has to be so serious, he shouldn't be wasting the best years of his life on phones that never ring, beds that are too made. Latin People's Sexiest Man Alive should be out shaking his ass and having fun and --

"You're my favorite player in Madrid," the girl he's been dancing with for a half hour whispers into his neck.

He looks up at her, "Really?"

She's looking at him, pausing, "It's the team with that guy -- Messi, right?"

Benzema's in a corner furiously making out with a girl and James is laughing at this one, nodding. Being a Barcelona player feels like a good way to be anonymous for the night.

She grins, pleased, "I've never liked that other one, the one who spends all that time on his hair -- Ronaldo? He seems so arrogant --"

"Cristiano isn't like that --" His words so sudden and sharp that she jerks a step back from him, drink spilling.

She asks him how he knows, if he's met Ronaldo at a game before, tells him that she doesn't think he's as good looking as he obviously thinks he is, if James knows if he's really slept his way through half the female population of Spain like she's heard, and James is thinking about what it felt like to have marble turn blood real in your hands, inside your mouth. What it felt like to wake up to himself in another man's bed, arms, how his whole life had never felt real till he'd had those eyes on him, how he'd become blood real at some point too and -- and Benzema's got his hands all over a girl's ass and his tongue down her throat and James is scouring above their heads for the bathroom signs, the exit ones. 

There's music inside his head like a bruise spreading across a thigh and this girl keeps staring at him and James isn't in the mood for this anymore. 

They leave at two am, Benzema with his long legged short dressed girl's arms around his waist, James alone. He kisses James's cheeks before he gets into a cab, tells him they have to do it again sometime. 

That night when he falls into his own bed, for the first time in weeks he falls asleep within minutes.

He hadn't checked his phone once all night. 

***

"How're you feeling, mon amis?"

Benzema's hand squeezing the back of his neck as he takes his spot next to him at the lockers before training. 

He'd had a lie in the day before. Spent their day off after the nightclub in his bed, not getting out of his bathrobe, binge watching his way through Netflix series, only answering a call to his mother. For the first time in a while he'd felt a little closer to being rested. Cristiano had spoken to him, rubbed his shoulder. He'd spent a night outside with friends and not stuck inside his head. Today was his first training back with the team and in two weeks he'd be back playing again. Things were looking up.

He was grinning at his new club buddy. "How was Sophia?" 

"Was that her name?" Laughing at James, ruffling his hair. "We're headed to Ibiza this weekend after the game. Her friend's gonna be there, the one with that tattoo right over her hips, she really wanted your number."

James is playing cute, oblivious. "She had a tattoo?"

"Who did?" Cristiano's voice.

James blinks, not looking at him, "I -- uh--"

James can hear him standing behind them and he doesn't turn to look, keeps his gaze down. His weekly sleep depended on it.

"James's new little girlfriend." Benzema laughing, James spiralling, everything flashing in front of him.

"She's not my -- we didn't --- I'm not --" blood hot heat inside his ears and cheeks, wanting to burn up right there on sight.

"A tiger, right over her..." Benzema makes claw motions with his hands and winks, gesticulating a little above his pelvis. James wants to curl back into bed, wants the night to be undone, this is the worst thing anyone's ever said about him. "What's another word for cat, James?" Benzema oblivious, laughing at James as he pulls him under his arm, leads him out onto the training grounds, James a bird trapped by a cat under his arm.

**

In the rondo James screws up a pass, lobs it over Pepe's head instead. 

"What was that, James?" Cristiano's loud laughter.

James is embarrassed but almost relieved to have him teasing him again, laughing too.

"Wakey, wakey." But Cristiano keeps going. "My son could probably make a better pass. Got your tiger girlfriend on your mind, huh?"

He doesn't drop it. After every pass or touch Cristiano makes little growling noises, throwing James's focus off, making him screw up other touches and passes, leading to more teasing and laughter. It's the first time he's paid attention to him in weeks and James is red by it, a throbbing ugly wound. 

The worst is, he deserves it. If that's what he thinks, that James could just -- that he'd do that -- and he screws up another pass, his heart like claws inside of him, fighting to get out.

As they move on to the next round of training, a relief to have it ended, Pepe throws an arm around him, gives him a gentle hug. "When he's not scoring he's the moodiest asshole in the world." Rubbing his hand through James's hair, giving him a smile. "You can't take everything he says personally."

James knows. That time he'd looked him in the eyes when he was drunk and said three words, you just can't take anything he says personally. 

For the rest of the training session Cristiano doesn't look at James, and it was like a balm to his skin and like a fist.

**


	35. Chapter 35

***

His first full game back and the mess of all this noise is in his head, the situation with Benitez, with Cristiano, finding himself messing up simple passes, head two paces behind his touch.

He's subbed off in the 60th minute, knowing the fact of his bad game will be broadcast to the rest of the world like this, the headlines over how Benitez was right to bench him, something burning deep at his eyes. He keeps his head low as he heads to the bench, frustrated, angry at himself, for letting him have this, letting them win.

"Hey, hey -- don't worry about it, okay?"

Cristiano with his hand there to him. His expression on him concerned, careful, voice gentle.

He'd walked half way across the field to see him.

James blinks up at him for a brief second where time collects, spools around them, and then blinks that burn back away.

He doesn't look at Benitez as he takes a seat, hearing him tell the press with a smile later about what a great game he'd had and James wants him to choke on it.

In the locker rooms after James doesn't hide his bad mood, has never been able to, his sleeve wearing the best and worst of his heart, slamming his locker shut, tossing his stuff aside, not speaking to the others, the first on the coach on the way back.

Takes the seat furthest at the back, his backpack saving the seat next to him for no one. Wants to be left alone to sulk, brood. Entertain his tantrum like it was an old friend.

Everyone boards and James keeps his head turned to the window, when the warm scent of his rich cologne hits him before anything else.

James's backpack picked up and tossed in front of them, Cristiano taking a seat next to him, like it's the most normal thing in the world.

James looks at him, then at his hands, then at the window, coach suddenly claustrophobic. He can hear Benitez only a few seats away from them. His neck so strained in focusing on the window he's sure he'll get a crick in it.

"He's doing this to get back at me."

James turns and Cristiano's head is leaned right in close towards his but his gaze is down, two live wires that don't meet.

"He can't get back at me so he's gonna get back at you."

Cristiano turns away again as everyone else finishes boarding and the coach starts moving.

They don't talk and James doesn't even chance looking his way again, sits with his head fixed towards the window. Feeling something gnawing deep at his throat, that kind of famine under his skin that makes him flinch when Cristiano starts to get up when they park at the stadium.

Cristiano picks up both their bags when he does, slinging one over his shoulder and takes the other in hand, all casual, like they both belong to him. Benitez talking with the coaching staff outside of the bus, and James feels like a man in cuffs as he tries to follow a few feet behind Cristiano, two people in the same team just happening to walk in the same direction. Feeling conspicuous, loud, the most obvious person in the world, cheeks flushed with this, how much he wants it.

Both bags are tossed into Cristiano's backseat and he hasn't even really looked at James once since the got off the coach, hasn't said a word to him, but every part of James is screaming, singing.

He doesn't even let himself believe they're free till they're a few roads away from the stadium, the radio on low, the night black and secretive around them.

He takes a good look at Cristiano then as his eyes fix on the road ahead, at the broad reassuring shape of his jaw, his neck, this man whose mouth has covered every inch of his body and yet had never been close enough. Never knowing what to say to him sometimes, wanting to apologize and never knowing for what, or where to begin. Maybe for getting in the way of his life at all. He wants to ask him what he meant about Benitez getting back at him but doesn't. Doesn't want to invoke his name in a moment like this at all.

Wishes they could keep driving, just keep the car going till they hit the city lines, then the national ones.

Part of him free finally, a held breath released. The other part forever his hostage in cuffs staring at the cement block that was pulling him down, wishing Cristiano would finally free him for real, for good, never speak to him again, do them a favor, save them both.

But he's silent, patient, waiting for Cristiano to get home, for the relief he knows the night will bring him.

***

Everyone is asleep by the time they get to his place. He keeps the lights off as he leads the way upstairs to his bedroom, James a trailing comma behind him.

The windows in his room are open, letting the cool autumn air in, the night feeling unburdened, light. He turns the lights on but only so they're at a warm glow, moves to the bed, James hovering behind, lost out here, he's forgotten how to do this, too much inside of him wound up, stalled, a safety in the hesitation.

On opposite sides of the room and yet the room is full of the heat of them. He doesn't know what he wants. To savour this. Devour this moment, take it in gulps. His heart on a timer, already sped towards the end, for the agony of silence that'll bruise him days later. Everything he loves with an expiry date, a price tag.

But for now there's the noise of hands on his back, down his spine, a mouth on his neck. James frozen. The last time they'd touched Benitez had walked in on them and Cristiano had walked out on him.

"Can I look at you now or..."

His breath on his neck like a promise, a threat, Cristiano turning James around to face him, and James hangs his head lower. He's not going to break his promise to him, he's saying, if avoiding him is what he wants then it's what he's gonna get, even when he has him he's not gonna have him. This is what he wants, right, James too scared to even make eye contact when they're inches apart. That's how good he's gonna be for him, that's how much he won't ruin this for them.

Cristiano tilting up his face to him and watching as he shuts his eyes.

Like sinking into something, smoke in his eyes and throat. Cristiano's mouth back against his neck, hungry there, pressing against the pulse of his throat like an animal, a tiger with a kill, blood in his mouth and lungs, in his veins again, alive, living, real.

James whispering "Cris, Cris, Cris", questions, needs.

His mouth is on his throat and his hands feeling for his crotch and James feels Cristiano everywhere, this is drowning and survival, remembering to forget.

Spread out under him on his big bed and Cristiano doesn't let him turn away from his kisses, holding him still, holding him down. He's not going to let them rethink this, he's not gonna give themselves a chance to stop. Imagines the scent of perfume on his skin, imagines the feel of other mouths and hands, fingers sliding between James, finding him the way that he knows only he knows, till he writhes under him, kissing harder.

James is loud and wild, like a man unleashed, demanding with his mouth and hips, and Cristiano doesn't ask him to be quiet. He holds Cristiano's head to his throat when he's close, begging for him to kiss him there harder, suck into his skin, both of them knowing he's being marked, taken. Cristiano's his tonight and James wants everyone to know it. Wants to send a thousand text messages to Benitez, leave voicemails of every sound Cristiano makes into his ears on Perez's phone, write the headlines for Marca himself.

Tonight Cristiano's his, tonight his throat belongs to him, his heart, his pulse. Tomorrow there'll be that bruised awkward silence of glances in training rooms, across the field. Benitez with his pigeon chest pumped out like he's won as the Spanish headlines question his performances. Benzema there stroking at his neck after the showers and laughing, "looks like someone's tamed their tiger", and James won't flinch, won't even blush because he knows now this is going to be all the bite of love he's ever going to get, and it's already more than he knew he could survive.

***


	36. Chapter 36

***

A Clasico, the game drawn at 2-2, suddenly Ronaldo flies down the left hand side of the field, picks out a pass to James, a goal.  
  
The figures on the screen run to celebrate with each other and Marcelo leaps up from the bed, jumping into a Siiiii pose as Cristiano groans at him, having to duck away from a thrown sock, laughing.  
  
"This doesn't count, I let you play as me. Of course you'd win."  
  
Marcelo taking his seat back next to him, a pointed look. "That's 'cause I beat you as me just before this."  
  
"Rematch, only the best three out of five counts."  
  
Marcelo laughing, but then checking his watch. "Maybe tomorrow, it's getting late. Not expecting any visitors tonight are you?"  
  
"Visitors?"  
  
Marcelo with a teasing smile, "A shot of Colombian espresso maybe?"  
  
Cristiano's shy ducking away smile, an over the top roll of his eyes. A silence as he loads up the screen again.  
  
"You were right, you know."  
  
Marcelo giving him a look, "I mean I always am, but what am I right about this time?"  
  
"James."  
  
Marcelo's staring at him.  
  
An exhale. "I'm too old to be messing around with a confused straight kid."  
  
Marcelo's eyebrows raising up, "Is that what he is?"  
  
"Should be dating supermodels his own age."  
  
Eyebrows like underscores, "Is that what he told you?"  
  
"You were the one who thought we shouldn't be together. You should be happy."  
  
Frowning, like this wasn't what he'd said or wanted at all, "I didn't want him to get hurt."  
  
"And if he's not with me, he won't be, right?" Doesn't hide the ice in his words, the layers of truth to it, the bitterness that everyone knows that Cristiano would hurt him, that there's inevitability to it. He takes in a long exhale then, deciding, letting it go. "He's seeing someone else."  
  
Marcelo's head jerks back as he turns to look at Cristiano head-on again in shock, "What, who?"  
  
Shrugging like it means nothing but grimacing as he talks, like his mouth is full of dirt and bile and blood, like he's describing seeing a crime scene, a dead body. "Some girl he met at a bar."  
  
"He told you this?"  
  
"I sort of... overheard something."  
  
"Are you sure?" Confused, concerned, like he's doubting his own perception of reality, "Maybe you misunderstood 'cause I just... it seems hard to believe he'd do that to you..."  
  
Heart sore enough to want to pretend like he did, like that's what it was, because that's what it feels like but, "We were kind of on a break, so."  
  
Cristiano doesn't blink because if he does then the burn in his eyes could look like more, doesn't want to give in to it. Because it's not even about James, it's everyone. His whole life destined to end this way. Someone moving on, wanting that mystical real life, that normality. Cristiano having to forever keep this a secret, buried, his life a lie.  
  
"Maybe he was just trying to get over you or something," Marcelo's voice, soft, direct. "You know he's crazy about you."  
  
Cristiano feels something stutter in his chest but doesn't blink, "He told you that?"  
  
"I don't need him to tell me something obvious, do I."  
  
He doesn't tell Marcelo that there's more to it. That he still takes James home some nights, when they're both a little wounded, broken. Tells himself it's his way of getting it all out of his system. Conquering the pain.  The longer you keep a wound open the longer you learn how to live with it. His way of being selfish, possessive, knowing if he's with him those nights then he won't be with anyone else, no supermodels, no girls with cat tattoos. Wanting to remind James who was really better in bed, that nobody would ever do the things he could do for him. Finding himself showing off and being over the top, finger fucking him till he's sore as he sucks him off, knowing no girl would ever have this with him, that no girl would ever get to fuck him, could ever get him losing his mind the way James would under him. His way of trying to show he didn't care. This was him being over it. He could fuck him for hours, then leave and not look at him for a week. A stare out he knows he can win, it's what he's good at. Trying to prove to himself it was only ever about the sex, had always just been fucking, had never meant anything else to him.  
  
"That's why he's fucking girls now then, right?" grimacing. His voice like one of his on the pitch tantrums, some dark rattled part of him leaking out, "It's not like it should be a surprise, it's not like I thought he wouldn't. He was always going to marry a nice girl and settle down, have a real life at some point, wasn't he?"  
  
You can't fuck straight guys and not expect this and yet at some point he knows he'd started lying to himself, started believing otherwise. At some point he'd started to believe in the ways James looked at him, touched him.  
  
"Is that what he told you?"  
  
He doesn't tell Marcelo that he's taken James home some nights because he'd seen him crying in the shower after being subbed off or left on the bench to rot by Benitez most of the game, seen him try to hide it, eyes bloodshot, trying to leave alone without anyone else noticing. Had seen him try to leave alone too often. That he blames himself for this. Takes James home some nights and makes love to him like it was the last thing he had to do on Earth. Let's James use him, exhaust himself on him, break apart in his arms. Would be too haunted by those sad lonely eyes otherwise. It was the least he could do.  
  
Cristiano's rolling his eyes at Marcelo again, settling further back into his pillows. "Best three out of five, okay?"  
  
Marcelo looks at him for a second longer but knows not to push for more answers than Cristiano will give, not wanting to indulge his darker mood, set it a table. Sighs, "Fine. I'll even let you play as you this time."  
  
Doesn't tell Marcelo about how afterwards in bed, when they're still lovers, bodies pressed up warm against each other like secrets, that he thinks of telling him things. A life story. The cliff notes. What if, what if, what if. Thinks of whispering dangerous words into his ears.  
  
But they don't talk anymore during sex, had gone back to existing as mime artists. That safety of silence.  
  
He knows though, at some point James isn't going to walk back with him to his car after a game. Won't sneak into his bedroom at the Bernabeu. Will get that real life and that real girlfriend, live a life that glossy magazines will cover breathlessly, and until then Cristiano tells himself that he's fine with this, that it only hurts when you're stupid enough to believe that you're not, lies to himself to keep the wound open.  

**


End file.
